'  ■    ■/: 


.^    •    v^ 


^^,^ 


WFm 


&y^! 


,tr,.ib-/    W 


'iVl'UiU^:    :V 


^  y 


-^,    ^'l. 


i^k 


r . 


V:M-f 


:W.V,^V 


w\W 


'■/^ 


l^miWa'^l 


V  iV^: 


-•rf*' 


:JfA. 


J   -W\^i 


^■> 


A^' 


-tf^. 


^ 


Mioce ligneous  Tblrv 


Vol  .  ai 


w^^ 


n 


I 


^i^lfeAJiiijAiiil^iiJ^liij.tl^^iiil^ 


m  i^aiD  ©IF  ma^^a® 


.HtfV 


1% 


DISCOURSE 


the;. 


SUBSTANCE  OF  WHICH  WAS  DELIVERED 


AT  THE 


ANNUAL  GENERAL  MEETING 


OF  THE 


BAPTIST  MISSIONARY  SOCIETY, 


EN  BRISTOL,  (ENG.)  SEPTEMBER,  1818. 


/ 

^Y  JOHN  FOSTER, 


TRENTON, 

PI^INTED    BY    GEORGE    SHERMAN. 

1832. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 

[prefixed  to  the  LONDON  EDITION.] 

The  length  of  the  foUowmg  Discourse,  the  prevailing  cast  of  its 
composition,  with  the  somewhat  slight  and  arbitrary  relation  be- 
tween it  and  the  text,  may  suggest  a  doubt  whether  it  might  not 
with  more  propriety,  after  receiving  a  slight  modification  in  the 
introduction,  have  been  printed  under  the  name  of  an  Essay.  But  as. 
the  substance  of  it,  throughout  all  the  series  of  topics,  though  indeed 
Avith  much  less  protracted  illustration,  was  actually  addressed  to  an 
auditory,  (whose  patience  the  preacher  could  not  sufficiently  ac- 
knowledge or  admire)  he  has  thought  it  would  perhaps  look  like 
affectation  to  adopt  any  other  title  than  one  describing  it  as  such  an 
address. 


A  DISCOURSE,  ^e. 


JUDGES  v.'33. 

They  came  not  lo  the  help   of  the  Lord,  to  the  help   of  the  Lord 
against  tlie  mighty. 

IT  would  be  an  impertinent  use  of  our  time  to  spend  many 
moments  in  apologizing  for  the  practice,  too  common  perhaps 
among  preachers,  of  accommodating  the  merely  secular  facts 
of  scripture  history,  or  objects  in  nature,  to  the  purpose  of 
representing,  in  the  way  of  formal  and  extended  parallel,  the 
topics  immediately  belonging  to  religion.  We  may,  however, 
just  observe,  that  it  seems  to  the  honour  of  religion  that  so 
many  things  cav,  without  the  art  of  forcing  resemblances,  be 
accommodated  to  its  illustration.  It  is  an  evident  and  remark- 
able fact,  that  there  is  a  certain  principle  of  correspondence  to 
religion  throughout  the  economy  of  the  world.  Things  bearing 
an  apparent  analogy  to  its  truths,  sometimes  more  prominently, 
sometimes  more  abstrusely,  present  themselves  on  all  sides  to 
a  thoughtful  mind.  He  that  made  all  things  for  himself  ap- 
pears to  have  willed  that  they  should  be  a  great  system  of 
emblems,  reflecting  or  shadowing  that  system  of  principles  in 
which  we  are  to  apprehend  Him,  and  our  relation  and  obliga- 
tions to  Him.  So  that  religion,  standing  up  in  grand  parallel 
to  an  infinity  of  things,  receives  their  testimony  and  homage, 
and  speaks  with  a  voice  which  is  echoed  by  the  creation. 


Q 

Wc  need  not  therefore  scruple  to  take  fbr  an  introduction  t« 
our  subject,  a  sentence  pronounced,  we  may  presume  at  tlic 
divine  dictation,  in  reproach  of  a  refusal  of  co-operation  in  a 
very  difTcrent  kind  of  service  from  that  which  wc  have  on  the 
present  occasion,  to  recommend. 

The  negative  form  of  the  charge, — They  came  not  to  the 
help  of  the  Lord, — may  remind  us  of  the  grevious  fact,  that  hy 
far  the  greater  number  of  the  judicial  negative  statements  in 
the  Bible,  respecting  the  conduct  of  men,  are  accusatitms. — 
The  mention  that  they  did  not  do  the  thing  in  question  is  very 
generally  the  implied  assertion  that  they  ought  to  have  done  it. 
And  tlic  considerati(m  becomes  still  more  awful  upon  i-ecollcc- 
tion  that  we  arc  told,  that  the  last  negative  statement  to  be 
uttered  on  earth,  and  uttered  by  the  greatest  voice,  will  be 
with  an  emphasis  of  condemnation ;  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it 
iiot — .'*' 

Observe  how  much  guilt  there  may  be  in  mere  omission,  and 
that  even  though  we  should  suppose  the  persons,  vvIjo  dechne 
the  one  specific  duty,  to  be  occupied  the  while  in  employments 
in  themselves  innocent  and  laudable.  It  is  very  possible  that 
tlic  people  referred  to  in  the  text  might  have  brought  a  plea 
on  this  ground  against  the  justice  of  the  malediction.  They 
might  pcrhaj)s  have  had  to  say,  that  they  were  diligently  man- 
aging their  rural  economy,  which  there  might  be,  at  the  time, 
particular  reasons  wliy  they  should  not  neglect ;  or  that  they 
were  carefully  instructing  their  children ;  or  that  they  were 
employing  tlie  time  in  some  peculiarly  solenm  forms  of  woiship, 
perhaps  imjdoring  the  intervention  of  heaven  in  the  present 
alarming  crisis,  under  a  persuasion  of  the  peifeet  sufficiency  of 
the  Divine  Power  independently  of  human  means.  But  no 
such  pleas  would  have  availed,  to  avert  the  vindictive  sentence 
which  the  prophetess  was  instructed  to  pronounce  on  their  fai- 


lui*e  to  do  that  one  (king  whicii  the  authorized  summons  had 
signified  to  be,  in  that  juncture,  their  precise  duty.  Such  alle- 
gations might  indeed  have  been  dishonestly  made,  as  an  attempt 
to  veil  selfishness  and  cowardice,  the  real  causes  probably  for 
withiiolding  the  required  service ;  and  then  the  hypocrisy 
would  have  incui'red  a  prompt  exposure  and  a  bitter  rebuke  j 
but  even  had  they  been  made  sincerely,  and  proved  to  be  ti'ue, 
they  would  not  have  arrested  or  revoked  the  condemnation.  It 
would  have  been  denounced  to  the  defaulters  that  tiie  sentence 
eould  not  be  suspended ;  for  that  it  is  of  the  essence  of  disobe- 
dience and  rebellion  to  assume  to  make  commutations  and 
substitutions  of  duty,  to  transfer  obligations  at  our  will  and 
convenience,  and  to  affect  to  meet  and  discharge  in  substance^ 
imder  the  form  of  preferred  and  easier  services,  the  obligation 
which  supreme  autliority  has  distinctly  affixed  to  the  harder 
one  that  is  evaded. 

Supposing  these  people  to  have  really  been  of  a  quiet  and 
harmless  disposition,  and  assiduous  in  the  useful  vocations  of 
ordijiary  life,  there  may  appear,  notwithstanding  the  urgency 
of  the  occasion,  something  hard  in  the  alternative  they  were 
placed  in,  of  suddenly  coming  forth  into  the  utmost  peril  of  life, 
or  suffering  all  that  was  imported  in  so  heavy  an  execration. 
And  in  the  retrospect  of  the  many  forms  into  which  liuman  du- 
ty has  been  diversified  by  occasions,  as  displayed  in  the  Bible 
and  other  records,  we  see  many  situations  of  exceeding  hard- 
ship— not  meaning,  by  such  a  term,  an  imputation  on  that 
Authority  which,  prescribed  their  arduous  exercises.  The 
great  contest  against  Evil,  in  all  its  modes  of  invasion  of  this 
world,  (but  we  mean  to  refer  chiefly  to  those  requiring  a  more 
directly  religious  form  of  resistance)  has  been  a  service  assign- 
ed in  every  possible  difference  of  circumstance  and  proportion  ; 
and  some  men's  shares  have  iiivolved  a  violence  of  exertion,  or 


5 

a  weight  of  suffering,  wliich  we  look  upon  with  wonder  and 
almost  with  terror.  We  shudder  to  think,  of  mortals  like  our- 
selves having  been  brought  into  such  fearful  dilemmas  between 
obedience  and  guilt.  We  shrink  from  placing  ourselves  but  hi 
imagination  under  such  tests  of  fidelity  to  God  and  a  good 
cause.  The  painful  sympathy  with  tliose  agents  and  sufferers 
terminates  in  self-congratulation,  that  their  allotment  of  duty 
lias  not  been  ouis.  Tlie  tacit  sentiment  is,  I  am  very  glad  I 
can  be  a  good  man  on  less  dismaying  conditions. 

Now,  to  pronounce  this  sentiment  to  be  wrong  would  be  to 
say  that  pain  is  better  than  case ;  that  it  is  more  desirable,  for 
its  own  sake,  to  i)ass  tlirough  much  tribulation  to  the  kingdom 
of  God,  than  to  have,  if  tiiat  might  be,  an  attendant  spirit  com- 
missioned to  annihilate  the  difficulties  during  our  progress. 
But  nevertheless,  this  feeling,  so  natural,  of  being  pleased  with 
our  exemptions,  and  which  becomes  a  sentiment  of  pure  religion 
when  it  rises  in  gratitude  to  God  for  having  apiK)inted  us  to  a 
less  formidable  service,  is  in  danger  of  being  indulged  to  the 
extent  of  a  pernicious  delusion.  Under  a  deceptive  noticm  that 
all  we  feel  is  gratitude  to  him,  we  may  be  making  exemptions 
for  ourselves  which  he  has  never  made,  all  the  while  saying, 
we  are  thankful  and  therefore  must  be  rlglit.  With  the  advan- 
tage of  this  imagined  sanction,  self-love  may  with  a  confident 
facility  extend  the  sphere  of  privilege  beyond  one  point,  and 
beyond  another,  where  he  had  marked  the  boundary,  always 
enlarging  with  the  strongest  propensity  on  that  side  where  the 
hardest  duties  arc  placed,  till  the  mind  reposes  at  length  in  a 
self-authorized  scheme  of  duty  which  disowns  all  coincidence 
with  the  dictates  of  the  divine  will. 

There  is  delusion  in  our  self-congratulation  in  contrasting 
what  is  recpiired  of  us  with  what  has  been  imposed,  in  severer 
injunction,  on  some  of  our  great  Master's  subjects,  if  we  do  not 


recognize  in  our  appointment  something  parallel,  though  it  may 
be  much  inferior,  to  whatever  was  hardest  in  theirs.  There  is 
delusion  if  we  are  permitted  to  escape  from  the  habitual  sense 
of  being,  in  the  character  of  the  servants  of  God,  placed  under 
the  duty  and  necessity  of  an  intense  moral  warfare,  against 
powers  of  evil  as  real  and  palpable  as  ever  were  encountered 
in  the  field  of  battle.  Not  to  feel  ourselves  pressed  upon  by 
resistless  evidence  and  admonition  of  this  fact,  will  be  to  be 
betrayed  into  all  those  false  estimates  of  things  wliich  can  be 
imposed  on  beings  insensible  of  the  very  essence  of  their  moral 
condition. 

But  the  greatest  number  of  even  instructed  persons  have  so 
faint  an  impression  of  this  fact,  of  an  urgent  necessity  of  war 
till  death,  as  the  grand  business  and  obligation  of  life,  that  no 
language  sounds  so  inane,  no  figures  appear  so  insignificantj 
no  forms  of  common-place  so  flat  and  dead,  as  those  which  rep- 
resent in  a  military  character  the  exertions  by  which  men  are 
to  evince  themselves  the  servants  of  God.  We  might  safely 
appeal  to  the  consciousness  of  many  hearers  and  readers 
w  hether,  at  the  recurrence  of  these  images  in  any  religious 
reference,  they  have  not  a  marked  sense  of  insipidity  and 
often  of  disgust,  caused,  in  some  degree,  we  may  allow,  by  the 
too  frequent  iteration,  but  still  more  by  the  impression  of  un- 
meaningness  and  futility  in  employing  such  terms  for  such  a 
subject. 

It  is  striking  to  observe,  at  the  same  time,  in  what  manner 
many  of  the  persons  who  are  thus  tired  to  loathing  of  these 
images  in  their  moral  and  spiritual  application,  shall  be  all  en- 
ergy when  the  same  forms  of  thought  come  in  literal  represen- 
tation of  war.  Most  of  the  excitable  animated  class  of  spirits, 
whether  in  youth  or  in  much  more  advanced  life,  can  be  kind- 
led to  enthusiasm  by  tlie  grand  imagery  of  battjies  and  heroic 

B 


10 

acliievements.  Those  very  terms  of  martial  metaplior,  under 
the  spiritual  import  of  which  they  are  beginning,  perhaps  amidst 
Some  religious  service,  to  sink  in  dulncss,  may  relieve  them  by 
a  sudden  diversitm  of  the  mind  away  to  some  imagined  scene  of 
real  conflict ;  and  it  shall  feel  a  proud  elation  in  rising  from  tlie 
stale  and  sleepy  notion  of  a  spiritual  warfare,  to  the  magnifi- 
cence of  the  combats  which  are  displayed  in  fire  and  blood  to 
the  eyes,  and  in  thunder  to  the  ears.  The  imagination  sliall 
follow  some  magnanimous  mortal,  of  history  or  fiction,  through 
scenes  of  tumult,  and  terror,  and  noble  daring,  and  shall  adore 
him  as  beheld  exulting  unhurt  in  victory,  or  breathing  out  his 
soul  as  a  hero  should  die.  The  enthusiast  while  sitting  still 
and  abstracted,  may  at  moments  be  almost  beguiled  in  fancy 
into  a  perscmation  of  tliis  favouiite  hero.  And  the  scenes  o^ 
destruction,  thus  fervidly  imagined,  shall  really  be  deemed  the 
subltmest  exhibitions  of  man,  in  which  human  energy  approach- 
es the  nearest  to  a  rivalry  with  the  immortals,  his  min<l  per- 
haps silently  pronouncing  this  very  term,  conformably  to  that 
last  perversity  of  human  madness  by  which  an  ejiithet  expres- 
sing negation  of  all  relati<m  to  death,  has  been  selected  in 
special  preference  to  be  applied  to  men  whose  very  business 
has  been  to  deal  in  death,  both  as  givers  and  receivers.  If,  in 
this  inflamed  state  of  the  mind,  the  idea  were  again  presented 
of  the  Christian  warfare,  of  a  contest  against  principalities  and 
powers,  and  spiritual  wickedness,  it  would  be  repelled  with  dis- 
dain of  the  impertinence  or  arrogance  which  could  assume  for 
siich  matters  any  of  the  lofty  terms  belonging,  and,  (it  would  be 
proudly  said)  deservedly  api)Iied,  to  the  ti-ansactions  of  Trafal- 
gar and  Waterloo.  This  contempt  may  be  inspired  by  the 
imagination  alone  of  the  glories  of  war,  but  it  would  be  felt  in 
a  still  strojjger  degree  by  most  of  the  nun  who  have  actually 
witnessed  and  siiarcd  tho  terrors   and   triumphs  of  martial 


11 

exploit,  if  it  could  happen  that  they  should  hear  the  figurative 
language  in  question,  and  lend  for  a  moment  attention  enough 
to  understand  what  it  should  mean.  In  sliort,  between  distaste 
for  its  insipidity,  and  almost  resentfid  scoin  of  its  impertinence 
of  pretension,  the  metaphor  would  be,  by  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  men  of  spirit  and  imagination,  flung  back  on  the  weak 
and  dreaming  religionists,  as  an  idle  fancy  just  fit  for  their 
jargon.  Let  these  wars,  enemies,  and  heroes  of  vapour,  they 
would  say,  busy  the  feeble  souls  to  which  they  can  have  the 
effect  of  realities. 

But  while  tliis  is  their  f^'^ling,  what  shall  we  think  of  the 
state  of  their  percepti(m  ?  Alas  for  the  ccmdition  of  the  senses 
of  tlie  souls  that  have  so  little  cognizance  of  a  most  fearful 
reality  which  exists  on  every  side  and  presses  upon  them  ! 
How  deplorable  to  see  men  exercising  their  faculties,  in  obser- 
vation, and  interest,  and  caution,  on  the  elements  and  agents 
around  them,  and  yet  scarcely  apprehending  the  presence  of 
the  worst  of  them  all,  and,  excepting  the  Divinity,  the  might- 
iest ;  and  to  see  them  "  sporting  themselves  with  their  own 
deceivings,'*  while  they  are  turning  away  with  slight  or  scorn 
fn)m  the  representations  by  which  divine  or  human  admonition 
is  attempting  to  alarm  them  to  a  sense  of  their  danger  from 
this  grand  enemy.  Moral  Evil.  And  then  to  observe  that 
among  creatures  so  insensible  there  is,  the  while,  a  quick  and 
ardent  recognition  of  enemies,  a  martial  spirit,  and  all  the  pomp 
and  pride  of  wars,  battles,  victories  !  Truly  it  is  a  spectacle 
for  the  most  malignant  intelligences  in  the  creation  to  exult 
over,  that  such  creatures  should  be  seeking  glory  in  destructive 
conflicts  with  one  another,  while  their  most  dreadful  foe  is  invad- 
ing them  all.  It  is  a  spectacle  »if  still  darker  character  than 
that  which  would  have  been  presented  by  opposed  armed  par- 


12 

ties  or  legions,  gallantly  maintaining  battle  on  the  yet  uncbver- 
cred  spaces  of  ground,  while  the  universal  deluge  was  rising. 

Alas  !  again  we  must  exclaim,  for  the  stupified  intelligence 
of  that  mind  which  can  regard  as  fanatical  extravagance  this 
language  which  would  arouse  it  to  behold  what  is  as  certainly  a 
reality  as  the  soul  is  a  reality,  and  as  dreadful  a  one  as  the 
ruin  of  the  soul  is  dreadful.  What  a  renovation  of  perceptive 
faculty  is  necessary  to  that  being  who  would  ask,  either  in 
scorn  or  ignorant  surprise.  What  and  where  is  that  foe,  so  ma- 
lignant a)id  powerful  ?  while  there  is  glaring  in  full  view  the 
mighty  mass,  and  force  and  operation,  of  all  that  depraves  and 
destroys  the  souls  of  men.  The  insensibility  to  this  fact  as  ex- 
isting, and  as  being  incomparably  the  most  awful  plienomcnon 
on  earth,  woidd  itself  betray,  in  such  a  deprivation  of  moral  in- 
tuition, the  intervention  of  the  very  enemy  described.  Let  the 
man  of  thoughtful  and  enlightened  sj)irit  survey  the  world  of 
mankind,  and  see  what  there  actually  prevails  in  hostility 
against  the  universality  of  human  spirits,  in  the  combined  foim 
of  intellectual  and  moral  depravity, — of  delusion  and  sin.  Let 
him  deeply  consider  what  it  is  that  he  is  beholdi?ig,  while  he 
sees  this  power  of  evil  assailing,  and  committing  grievons  mis- 
chief upon,  every  human  being,  his  experience  testifying  tiiat 
himself  is  not  exempted.  Let  him  reflect  that  what  he  sees  is 
an  operation  reducing  unnumbered  myriads  of  rational  and  im- 
mortal creatures  to  a  state  so  nuich  worse  than  that  which 
would  be  the  correct  and  happy  condition  of  tiieir  being,  that 
there  is  notliing  in  all  terrestrial  things  great  enough  to  give  a 
measure  for  the  difference.  Let  him  form  his  judgment  of  the 
gloomy  fact  under  l»is  view  on  an  estimate  of  the  injury  done  to 
each  one,  and  of  tiie  number  so  injured,  including  in  the  account 
the  generations  of  all  past  time.  And  let  him  try  whether  an 
earnest  and  protracted  attention  to  the  dire   exhibition  will 


13 

detect  a  fallacy  in  its  appearance  of  magnitude  and  atrocity,  so 
that  his  last  sober  judgment  should  be  as  a  relief  from  a  super- 
stitious terror.  No ;  he  will  find,  uniformly,  that  the  evil 
reveals  itself  to  him  in  still  more  substantial  and  deadly 
character,  the  longer  his  mind  fixes  with  close  and  solemn 
inspection  on  any  of  its  innumerable  forms.  The  progressive 
aggravation  of  the  impression  might  become  overpowering,  if 
there  were  to  be  suddenly  imparted  to  him  a  great  addition  of 
religious  light  and  sensibility,  thi'ough  which  he  should  receive, 
while  contemplating  this  vision  of  evil,  a  brighter  manifestation 
of  the  holiness  of  God,  and  the  perfection  of  his  law.  Even 
such  a  view  as  would  tluis  overpower  the  strongest  mind,  might 
still  be  but  a  faint  apprehension  compared  with  tlie  perception 
of  some  superior  pure  spirit  beholding  this  world  :  and  how 
much  more  so  in  comparison  with  the  Redeemer's  estimate  and 
impression  of  the  error  and  depravity  of  our  race.  No  language 
of  any  world  can  ever  disclose  the  depth  of  his  thought  and 
feeling  at  the  view.  That  thought  and  feeling  were  the  only 
adequate  apprehensio  nof  the  object.  A  devout  observer  will 
therefore  feel  too  certain,  that  the  portentous  moral  spectacle  he 
is  looking  upon  has  in  it  an  intensity  and  aggravation  of  evil 
but  feebly  expressed  by  adopting  the  terms  and  images  of  all 
that  is  the  most  odious  and  appalling  in  this  world,  and  saying 
that  the  wide  multitude  of  human  souls  are  invaded,  robbed, 
polluted,  chained,  tormented,  murdered. 

Sometimes,  we  contemplate,  perhaps,  the  mighty  progress  of 
destruction,  as  carried  over  a  large  tract  of  the  eartli  by  some 
of  the  memorable  instruments  of  the  divine  wrath,  such  as  At- 
tila,  Zingis  Khan,  or  Timour.  We  behold  a  wide  spreading 
terror  preceding,  to  be  soon  followed  by  the  realization  of  every 
dreadful  presage  in  resistless  ravage  and  extermination.  The 
doomed,  countless,  multitudes,  crowd  tumultuously  on  our  view. 


14 

in  all  the  forms  of  dismsiy,  and  vain  eflFort,  and  suffcrinp*,  and 
death  ;  a  world  of  ghastly  countonantes,  desperate  struggles, 
lamentable  cries,  streaming  blood,  and  expiring  agonies  ;  with 
the  corresponding  circumstances  of  fury  and  triumpli,  and  the 
appi-opriatc  scenery  of  habitations  burning  and  the  land  made 
a  desert.  The  fancied  forms  of  individual  sufferers,  incessantly 
marked  forth  from  the  confused  aggregate,  and  presented  to 
the  mind  in  momentary  glimpses,  preserve  the  vividness  of  our 
pci*ception  of  the  misery,  unconfounded  in  the  view  of  its 
im;n Misity,  while  that  immMisity  throws  over  all,  the  more  dis- 
tinct impressions  a  general  character  of  horror. 

"When  a  man  of  ardent  imagination  has  dwelt  upon  such  a 
scene  till  it  almost  glows  into  reality  in  his  view,  let  him  be 
assured  it  is  the  language  of  truth  and  soberness  that  affirms 
this  spectacle  to  form  but  a  faint  and  inadequate  comparison 
for  representing  that  other  invasiim,  which  is  made  upon  the 
spirits  of  all  mankind,  tliat  invasion  of  which,  indeed,  all  these 
horrors  are  themselves  but  a  few  of  the  exterior  circumstances 
and  results.  And  yet  creatures  assailed  and  in  danger  of  des- 
truction by  this  more  awful  calamity,  surveying  in  imagination, 
and  shuddering  vdiile  they  survey,  these  furies  a)jd  miseries  of 
remote  times  or  regions,  shall  bless  their  good  fortune  that  they 
are  not  exposed  to  any  agency  of  evil  a  thousandth  part  so 
formidable  ! 

In  following  in  thought  those  perpetrators  of  devastation  and 
carnage,  we  have  the  consolation  of  foraeeing  its  end.  The 
Csesars  and  Attilas  were  as  mortal  as  the  millions  who  exjiircd 
to  give  them  fame.  Of  Timour,  the  language  of  the  Historian 
kimlling  into  poetry  relates  that,  "  he  pitched  his  last  camp  at 
Otrar,  where  he  was  expected  by  the  Angel  of  Death.*"  But 
the  power  that  wages  war  immediately  on  the  souls  of  men,  the 

•  Gibbon- 


15 

power  of  deliisioji  and  depravity,  has  continued  to  live  and  des- 
troy while  all  these  renowned  exterminators  have  yielded  to 
the  decree  that  sent  them  after  their  victims.  It  is  perpetually 
invigorated  hy  the  very  destruction  which  it  works ;  as  if  it  fed 
upon  the  slain  to  strengthen  itself  for  new  slaughter,  immortal 
hy  the  very  means  of  death.  For  the  operations  of  sin  on 
human  hcings  are  of  a  nature  to  facilitate  its  renewed  and  pro- 
longed operations.  The  effects  are  continually  reflected  hack 
on  the  cause,  with  which  they  unite,  and  impart  an  indefinite 
augmentation  to  its  force ;  the  main  principle  of  its  strength, 
all  the  while,  heing  in  the  natural  aptitude  of  its  unhappy  suh- 
Jects  to  receive  the  mischief  which  it  applies.  The  heings 
therefore  nnder  the  predominant  power  of  sin  are  becoming, 
without  intermission,  more  and  more  absolutely  sinners ;  so 
that  each  step  in  the  advance  gives  stronger  assurance  of  their 
maintaining  that  eliaracter  in  the  next.  But  what  an  awful 
scene  is  a  woild  with  a  vast  multitude  of  inhabitants  of  whom 
the  great  majoiity  are  incessantly  growing  worse !  And  to  what 
dreadful  perfection  of  evil  might  not  such  a  race  attain  but  for 
Death,  that  cuts  the  term  of  individuals  so  short,  and  but  for 
the  Spirit  of  God,  that  converts  some,  and  puts  a  degree  of 
restraint  on  tlic  rest. 

And  now,  if  there  is  really  thus  in  action,  against  the  souls 
of  our  race,  sucli  an  enemy  as  all  these  epithets  and  images 
can  but  faintly  represent,  can  a  professed  servant  of  God  look 
round  and  felicitate  himself  on  having  an  extremely  easy  test 
of  his  fidelity?  Where  does  he  find  his  priviledged  ground  of 
immunity  and  indulgence,  while  this  mighty  force  of  evil  drives 
and  sweeps  and  rages,  against  God,  and  truth,  against  goodness 
and  happiness,  and  his  own  spirit  and  all  men's  spirits,  as  real- 
ly as  an  infernal  le,:i;ion  could  do  ?  In  seeking  such  exemption 
he  must  abandon  all  the  objects  and  interests  against  whicli 


16 

this  hostility  is  directed  ;  must  therefore,  in  effect,  co-operate 
with  the  enemy.  Let  him  consider  what  scheme  it  is  possible 
to  conceive  of  true  service  to  the  King  of  heaven  in  this  bad 
world  which  sliould  not  commit  him  in  conflict,  at  every  point 
of  its  execution.  Against  every  good  he  can  think  of  he  will 
find  an  appropriate  antagonist  evil  already  in  full  action,  an  ac- 
tion that  will  not  remit  and  sink  into  quiet  when  he  approaches 
to  effect  the  intended  good.  Nay,  indeed,  in  what  way  is  it 
that  the  servant  of  God  the  most  promptly  apprehends  tlie  na- 
ture of  his  vocation  but  in  that  of  seeing  what  it  is  against?  And 
when  he  puts  the  matter  to  experimental  proof,  does  he  ever 
find  that  those  a])prehended  adversaries  are  nothing  but  menac- 
ing shadows  ?  Let  him  that  has  made  the  most  determined, 
protracted,  and  extensive  trial,  tell  whether  it  is  idle  common- 
place and  extravagance  when  we  say  that  all  christian  exhorta- 
tion is  in  truth  a  summons  to  war. 

There  arc  many  forms  and  agencies  of  this  grand  enemy, 
moral  evil,  which  press  so  immediately  on  a  man's  own  personal 
economy  that  a  habitual  conflict  with  them  is  an  essential  c(m- 
dition  of  the  christian  character.  A  practical  question  of  hos- 
tility or  acquiescence  is  implicated  with  the  ordinary  course  of 
his  action  and  internal  discipline.  There  are  other  forms,  of 
great  power  and  hatefulness,  existing  in  the  world,  which  do 
not  so  directly  force  themselves  into  the  question  of  his  being  a 
a  christian  or  not.  In  judgment  and  feeling  he  must  be,  of 
course,  their  implacable  enemy.  But  since  they  throw  no 
temptation  in  his  way,  have  the  sphere  of  their  malignant  oper- 
ation perhaps  at  a  great  distance,  leave  a  very  wide  field  clear 
for  christian  exercise,  and  perhaps,  besides,  may  seem,  by  their 
magnitude  and  consolidated  establislmient,  to  bid  a  more  com- 
plete defiance  to  the  efforts  of  individuals  tlmn  other  evils  that 
might  be  attacked,  it  may  be  allowed  a  matter  of  somewhat 


17 

less  definable  oblij^ation  in  what  degree  he  shall  actively  expend 
his  animosity  upon  them*  The  exhortation  to  exert  a  share  of 
his  force  in  this  direction,  may  be  considered  as  partly  an  ap- 
peal to  those  higher  sentiments  of  the  religious  spirit  which 
aspire  to  the  full  magnanimity  and  zeal  of  the  christian  charac- 
ter. It  is  an  admonition  to  the  professed  adherents  of  Him  that 
came  on  earth  for  the  purpose  of  a  grand  conflict,  that  if  all  the 
moral  evil  in  the  world  is  not  acting  immediately  against  them, 
it  is  against  Him;  and  that  the  measure  of  their  fidelity  will  be 
marked  by  the  extent  to  which,  in  proportion  to  their  means^ 
they  identify  themselves  with  Him  in  his  great  warfare.  It  is 
an  incitement  to  their  ambition  that  it  may  never  again  be 
said,  with  respect  to  any  part  of  his  operations  against  evil 
among  men,  that  he  trod  the  wine-press  alone,  and  that  of  the 
people  there  was  none  with  him. 

When  animated  to  this  high  and  enterprising  spirit,  a  good 
man  may  wonder  that  the  heathenism  prevailing  over  large 
tracts  of  the  world  should  so  little,  in  this  country  or  other  prot- 
cstant  nations,  till  a  comparatively  recent  time,  have  been 
accounted  as  comprehended  within  the  sphere  of  required 
christian  exertion.  One  most  amiable  fraternity  of  christians, 
indeed,  whose  gentleness  at  home  involves  a  power  of  glowing' 
into  energy  and  heroism  at  the  greatest  distance,  have  made 
missions  to  the  heathens  an  essential  part  of  their  system  ;  but 
in  general  the  friends  of  religion  seem  to  have  regarded  those 
dreadftd  maladies  of  the  moral  world,  the  delusions  and  abomi- 
nations of  paganism,  with  a  sort  of  submissive  awe,  as  if,  almost, 
they  had  established  a  prescriptive  right  to  their  place  on 
earth ;  or  as  if  they  were  an  unchangeable  uncontroulable  part 
of  the  great  system  of  things,  like  the  destructive  climates  of 
some  portions  of  the  gh)be,  and  the  liability  in  others  to  the  ter- 
I'ors  of  earthquake.     Or  at  least,  when  they  have  looked  on 

C 


18 

tlioae  mighty  forms  of  darkness  and  iniquity,  as  destined  to 
Vanish  at  some  time  from  the  scenes  of  wiiich  they  have  been 
so  long  the  curse,  and  Imve  prayed  for  that  time  to  be  hastened 
on,  they  have  found  themselves  anticipating  and  invoking,  with 
undefined  conception,  some  entirely  unwonted  and  perhaps 
properly  miraculous  mode  of  divine  interposition,  and  felt  as  if 
it  would  be  for  men  to  stand  off  and  see  what  God  can  do ; — in 
this  very  feeling  perhaps  admitting  on  their  minds,  in  a  degree, 
the  imposition  through  which  a  defect  of  faith  and  zeal  may  be 
mistaken  for  humility  and  devotion. 

Within  a  later  period,  however — within  that,  chiefly,  which 
lias  shewn,  on  so  vast  a  scale,  the  availableness  of  human  agen- 
cy for  overturning  things  of  ancient  and  wide  and  comfnanding 
establishment  in  the  world, — many  good  men  have  begun  td 
regard  with  mucli  less  prostration  of  feeling  those  gigantic 
<*  dominations"  which  have  for  so  many  ages  held  so  many  nar 
tions  in  the  debasement  of  superstition.  It  came  to  be  question- 
ed why  a  servant  of  Christ  should  shrink  from  looking  any  of 
the  powers  of  darkness  in  the  face,  from  defying  him  in  his 
Master's  name,  or  from  making  the  experiment  of  an  appli- 
cation of  heaven's  own  fire  to  his  abhorred  establishments  of 
deceit  and  wickedness,  in  which  the  souls  of  men  are  destroyed. 
The  practicability  of  that  experiment  became  evident  as  the 
ideal  defence  round  these  tyrannies  over  the  mind,  the  infernal 
charm  by  which  tlioy  had  made  themselves  to  be  regarded  as 
inviolable  to  all  attempts  by  men,  broke  up.  And  the  evidence 
of  the  practicability  enforced  a  conviction  of  duty  on  some  of 
those  to  whom  the  cause  of  heaven  was  the  object  of  highest 
concern  on  earth. 

This  impression  was  strongly  felt  by  the  first  movers  of  the 
project  of  that  Mission  to  India,  which  we  cannot  hesitate  to 
represent  as  one  of  tiic  most  rational  and  cllicient  enterprises  of 


19 

the  enlarging  christian  ambition  to  make  war  on  the  greatest 
and  most  inveterate  evils  of  the  moral  world.  When  awaken- 
ed suddenly,  as  it  were,  to  an  ampler  view  of  the  world  as  sL 
field  of  activity  for  the  zealots  for  the  best  cause,  they  were 
struck  with  surprise  at  seeing  so  few  adventuring  upon  it ;  and 
they  thought  it  bigh  time  that  an  end  should  be  put  to  the  quie- 
tude of  sentiment,  the  antichrisiian  tolerance,  for  what  was  sa 
proudly  and  almost  with  impunity  standing  in  defiance  of  that 
cause. 

The  might  and  virulence  of  the  evil  to  which  hostile  atten- 
tion was  thus  roused,  were  obvious  enough,  under  a  very  gene- 
ral and  iuipcrfect  knowledge,  to  place  the  design  far  out  of  any 
commcm  order  of  religious  enterprise, — far  enough  for  it  to 
provoke  the  contempt  of  those  who  have  no  notion  of  the  inter- 
ference of  the  Divine  power;  far  enough,  indeed,  to  ensure 
frustration  and  disgrace  if  it  were  undertaken  in  dependence 
on  any  other  than  that  superior  strength.  Yet  the  information 
possessed  at  that  time,  by  even  the  cultivated  part  of  the  nation, 
had  not  sufficed  to  give  any  thing  approaching  to  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  superstition  and  depravity  of  the  people  of  Hindoos- 
tan.  It  is  chiefly  during  the  period  since  our  Mission  was 
commenced,  and  in  a  considerable  degree  in  consequence  of  the 
discussions  and  the  exposition  of  evidence  occasioned  by  the 
animosity  against  it,  that  a  rapidly  increasing  knowledge  has 
brought  the  judgment  of  the  community  to  that  estimate  of  the 
character  and  condition  of  the  Hindoos,  which  the  translations 
jnade  from  their  sacred  books  by  the  missionaries  and  other 
eastern  scholars,  and  the  reports  of  travellers  reduced  at  last 
to  the  necessity  of  being  honest,  are  fast  contributing  to  place 
beyond  all  controversy.  .  If  there  was  perhaps  in  so  old  amj 
well  known  a  thing  as  human  nature  no  undetected  perversity, 
for  thgse  disclosures  to  bring  to  light  as  a  new  principle  of  evil. 


20 

they  have,  however,  shewn  some  of  its  known  evil  principlee 
inhering  with  such  an  absohitencss  of  possessive  power,  and 
displaying  tlieir  despotism  in  sueh  wantonly  versatile,  extrava- 
gant, and  monstrous  effects,  as  to  surpass  all  our  previous 
imaginations  and  measures  of  possibility.  They  have  placed 
before  us,  as  constituting  the  actual  state  of  a  prodigious  mass 
of  human  existence,  what  it  would  have  seemed  to  require  a 
super-human  genius  for  shapes  of  degradation  and  absurdity  to 
have  invented  but  as  dreams  of  fancy. 

There  is  much  in  the  Hindoo  system  that  is  strikingly  pecu- 
liar ;   but  as  it  is  the  substantial  greatness  of  the  evil,  rather 
than  its  specific  discriminations,  tiiat  requires  to  be  presented 
to  the  view  of  christian  zeal,  our  brief  notices  will  mainly  place 
the  emphasis  on  qualities  common  to  this  with  the  other  princi- 
pal mod«^s  of  paganism.      Our  object  is  rather  to  exhibit  the 
system  in  its  stiength  of  pernicious  operation  than  in  any  ex- 
planatory statement  of  its  form  and  materials.     There  needs  no 
great  length  of  description,  since  the  communications  of  mission- 
ai'ics,  and  various  works  in  common  circulation,  have  made  all 
who  take  the  least  interest  in  the  subject  familiarly  acquainted 
with  the  prominent  features  of  the  heathenism  of  central  Asia. 
For  the  attainment  of  any  thing  like  a  complete  knowledge  it 
may  defy  all  human  faculty,  which  faculty  besides,  if  it  might 
search  the  universe  for   choice  of  subjects,  could  find  nothing 
less  worth  its  efforts  for  knowledge.     The  system,  if  it  is  to  be 
so  called,  is  an  utter  chaos,  without  top,  or  bottom,  or  centre, 
or  any  dimension  or  pro}iortion  belonging  either  to  matter  or 
mind,  and  consisting  of  what  deserves  no  better  order.   It  gives 
one  the  idea  of  immensity  filled  with  what  is  not  of  the  value  of 
an  atom.     It  is  the  most  remarkable  exemplification  of  tlic 


21 

possibility  of  making  the  grandest  ideas  contemptible,  for  that 
of  infinity  is  here  combined  with  the  very  abstract  of  worth- 
lessness. 

But,  deserving  of  all  contempt  as  it  is,  regarded  merely  as  a 
farrago  of  notions  and  fantasies,  it  becomes  a  thing  for  detesta- 
tion and  earnest  hostility  when  viewed  in  its  practical  light,  as 
the  governing  scheme  of  principles  and  rites  to  a  large  portion 
of  our  race.  Consider  that  tliere  is  thus  acting  upon  them,  as 
religion,  a  system  which  is  in  nearly  all  its  properties,  that 
which  the  true  religion  is  not,  and  in  many  of  them  the  exact 
reverse.  Look  at  your  religion,  presented  in  its  bright  attri- 
butes before  you,  reflecting  those  of  its  Author  ;  and  then  rea- 
lize to  your  minds  as  far  as  you  can,  the  condition  of  so  many 
millions  of  human  spirits  receiving,  without  intermission,  from 
infancy  to  the  hour  of  death,  the  full  influence  of  the  direct 
opposites  to  these  divine  principles, — a  contrast  of  condition  but 
faintly  typified  by  tlmt  between  the  Israelites  and  the  Egyp- 
tians in  beholding,  on  the  different  sides,  tlie  pillar  in  its 
appearance  over  the  Red  Sea.  Consider  in  comparison  the 
intellectual  and  moral  systems  under  which  we  and  they  are 
passing  forward  to  another  world.  While  ours  has,  as  its  solar 
light  and  glory,  tlic  doctrine  of  One  Being  in  whom  all  perfec- 
tions are  united  and  infinite,  theirs  scatters  that  which  is  the 
most  precious  and  vital  sentiment  of  the  human  soul,  and  indeed 
of  any  created  intelligence,  to  an  indefinite  multitude  and  diver- 
sity of  adored  objects;  the  one  system  carrying  the  spirit 
downward  to  utter  debasement  through  tliat  very  element  of 
feeling  in  which  it  should  be  exalted,  while  the  other,  when  in 
full  influence,  bears  it  upward  in  spite  of  a  thousand  things 
combining  to  degrade  it.  The  relation  subsisting  between  man 
and  the  Divinity,  as  unfolded  to  view  in  the  true  religion,  is  of  a 
•mple  and  stJcmn  character ',    whereas  the  Brahminical  tlieory 


22 

exhibits  this  relation  in  an  infinitely  confounded,  fantastic, 
vexatious,  and  ludicrous  complexity  of  form.  While  in  the 
christian  system  the  future  state  of  man  is  declared  with  the 
same  dignified  simplicity,  the  opposed  paganism  between  some 
inane  dream  of  an  aspiring  mysticism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
paltriest  conceits  of  a  reptile  invention  on  the  other,  presents^ 
we  might  say  sports,  this  sublime  doctrine  and  fact  in  the 
shapes  of  whimsey  and  riddle.  Ours  is  an  economy  according 
to  which  religion,  considered  as  in  its  human  subjects,  consists  in 
a  state  of  the  mind  instead  of  exterior  formalities;  the  institutes 
of  the  Hindoos  make  it  chiefly  consist  in  a  miraculously  multi- 
plied and  ramified  set  of  ritual  fooleries.  It  is  almost  superfluous 
tor  notice  in  the  comparison,  that  while  the  one  enjoins  and  pro- 
motes a  perfect  morality,  the  other  essentially  favours,  and  even 
formally  sanctions,  the  woist  vices.  It  may  suffice  to  add,  that 
while  the  true  religi«m  knows  nothing  of  any  precedence  in  the- 
Divine  estimate  and  regard,  of  one  class  of  human  creatures 
before  another,  in  virtue  of  nativity  or  any  mere  natural  dis- 
tinction, tl>e  superstition  we  are  describing  has  rested  very 
much  of  its  power  upon  a  classification  according  to  which  one 
considerable  proportion  of  the  people  are,  by  the  very  circinn- 
stance  of  their  birth,  morally  distinguished  as  holy  and  venera- 
ble, and  another  more  numerous  proportion,  as  base  and 
contemptible,  sprung  from  the  feet  of  the  creating  god,  that 
they  might  be  slaves  to  the  tribe  which  had  the  luck  and  honour 
to  spring  fronk  his  head. 

Such  is  the  aggregate  of  perversions  of  all  thought,  and  feel- 
ing, and  practice,  ^nd  yet,  the  system,  being  religion,  acts  on 
its  subjects  with  that  kind  of  power  which  is  appropriate  and 
peculiar  to  religion.  The  sense  w  hicli  man,  by  the  very  consti- 
tuti  in  of  his  nature,  has  of  the  existence  of  some  super-human 
power,  is  one  of  the  strongest  priiicii)lcs  of  that  nature ,  whut- « 


( 


23 

ever,  therefore,  takes  effectual  hold  of  this  sense  will  go  far  to- 
ward acquiring  the  regency  of  his  moral  being.  This  conjunc- 
tion of  so  many  delusions  does  take  possession  of  this  sense  in 
the  minds  of  the  Hindoos,  with  a  mightier  force  than  probably 
we  see  in  any  other  exliibition  of  the  occupancy  of  religion,  on 
a  wide  scale,  in  the  world.  But  to  the  power  which  the  super- 
stition has  in  thus  taking  hold  of  the  religious  sense,  is  to  be 
added  that  which  it  acquires  by  another  and  a  dreiulful  adap- 
tation ;  for  it  takes  hold  also,  as  with  more  numci-ous  hands 
tlian  those  given  to  some  of  the  deities,  of  all  the  corrupt  prin- 
ciples of  the  heart.  What  an  awful  plienomenon,  that  among  a 
race  of  rational  creatures  a  religion  should  be  mighty  almost  to 
omnipotence  by  means,  in  a  great  measure,  of  its  favourable- 
ness to  evil !  What  a  melancholy  display  of  man,  tliat  the  two 
contrasted  visitants  to  the  world,  the  one  from  heaven,  the  oth- 
er deserving  by  its  qualities  to  have  its  origin  refi*rred  to  hell, 
—that  these  two  coming  to  make  trial  of  their  respectvie  adap- 
tations and  affinities  upon  human  spirits,  the  infernal  one  should 
find  free  admission,  through  congeniality,  to  the  possession  of 
tlie  whole  souls  of  immense  multitudes,  while  the  one  from  hea- 
ven should  but  obtain  in  individuals,  here  and  there,  a  posses- 
sion which  is  partial  at  the  best,  and  to  be  maintained  by  a  con- 
flict to  the  end  of  life  against  implacably  repugnant  principles 
in  the  mind.  Well  may  a  christian  be  affected  with  the  most 
humiliating  emotion,  both  for  bis  race  and  himself,  while  he  re- 
fleets, — I  have  a  nature  which  might  have  yielded  itself  entire 
to  a  false  religion,  but  so  reluctantly  and  partially  surrenders 
itself  to  the  true  one  as  to  retain  me  in  the  condition  of  having 
it  for  the  chief  concern  of  my  life  and  prayers  that  tlie  still 
opposing  dispositions  may  be  subdued. 

We  may  assume  it  as  a  fact,  too  obvious  to  need  illustration 
in  parti«ulars,  that  this  superstition,  while  it  commands  the  faith 


24 

of  its  subjects,  completes  its  power  over  them  by  its  acjordanee 
to  their  pride,  malevolence,  sensuality,  and  deceitfulness  ;  to  that 
natural  concomitant  of  pride,  the  baseness  which  is  ready  to 
prostrate  itself  in  homage  to  any  thing  that  shall  put  itself  in 
place  of  God  ;  and  to  that  interest  which  criminals  feel  to 
transfer  their  own  accountablencss  upon  the  powers  above  them. 
But  then  think  what  a  condition  for  human  creatures :  they 
believe  in  a  religion  which  invigorates,  by  coincidence  and 
sanction,  those  principles  in  their  nature  which  the  true  reli- 
gion is  intended  to  destroy ;  and  in  return,  those  principles  thus 
strengthened  contribute  to  confirm  their  faith  in  the  religion. 
The  miscliief  inilicted  becomes  the  most  persuasive  argument 
for  confidence  in  the  inflictcr. 

Obsei've,  again,  the  power  possessed  by  this  stupendous  de- 
lusicm  in  having  direct  hold  on  the  Senses,  in  so  many  ways, 
even  exclusively  of  the  grosser  means,  (the  grossest  possible, 
as  you  are  apprised)  of  wliich  it  avails  itself  to  please  them. 
It  comes  out  in  manifestation  upon  the  view  of  its  devotees  in  a 
visible  striking  imagery,  which  meets  them  on  all  sides.     All 
their  vanities  of  doctrine  stand,  as  it  were,  embodied  before 
them,  and  occupy  their  faculties  sooner  than  they  can  think, 
more  constantly  than  they  think,  and  in  a  mode  of  possession 
stronger  tlian  mere  thought.     Indeed  it  is  a  mode  of  possession 
whicli,  (after  faith  has  grown  into  the  habit  of  the  mind)  may 
be  effectual  on  the  feelings  tliough  thought  be  wanting ;    for  we 
may  presume  that  in  India,  as  in  other  regicms,  when  external 
forms  and  shows  have  been  admitted  as  symbols  of  subjects  of 
belief,  they  may  preserve  in  the  peojjle  much  of  the  moral  habi- 
tude a])propriatc  to  that  belief,  even  at  times  when  there  is  no 
strictly  intellectual  apprejjension  of  the  matter.     The  Hindoo  irf 
under  the  influence  of  tliis  enchantment  upon  his  senses,  almost 
tv'horcver  the  christian  rcjnoBstrant  against  the  dreams  and  rites 


25 

ef  his  superstition  can  approach  him,  seeking  access  to  his  reason 
and  conscience.  The  man  thus  attempting  may  have  read  idle 
fictions  of  magical  spells,  \vl»ich  obstruct  the  passing  of  some  line, 
or  preclude  entrance  at  a  gate ;  but  hert  he  may  perceive  a 
real  intervening  magic,  between  the  truth  he  brings,  and  the 
intellectual  and  moral  faculties  into  which  he  wishes  to  intro- 
duce it.  In  his  missionary  progress  among  the  people,  perhaps 
he  sliall  address  them  for  the  first  time  where  there  is  in  sight 
some  votive  object,  some  consecrated  relic,  or  the  tomb  of  some 
revered  impostor  :  tilings  which,  connected,  in  their  apprehen- 
sion, as  closely  with  religion  as  their  garments  are  with  their 
persons,  must  needs  be  indicative  that  that  which  they  belong 
to  is  there ;  they  are  felt  as  pledges  of  its  reality,  and  signs  of 
its  authority  impending  over  them.  A  very  firm  association 
has  not  only  the  effect  of  our  being  reminded  by  the  less  object 
of  the  greater,  but  of  our  having  an  aggravated  sense  of  the 
reality  of  that  greater. 

His  next  address  may  be  uttered  in  the  vicinity  of  a  temple, 
which,  if  in  ruins,  seems  to  tell  but  so  much  the  more  emphati- 
cally, by  that  image  and  sign  of  antiquity,  at  what  a  remote 
and  solemn  distance  of  time  that  was  the  religion  which  is  the 
religion  still ;  if  undilapidated  and  continuing  in  its  appropriate 
use,  overawes  their  minds  with  the  mysterious  solemnities  of  its 
inviolable  sanctuary  ;  while  the  sculptured  shapes  and  actions 
of  divinities,  overspreading  the  exterior  of  the  structure,  have 
nothing  in  their  impotent  and  monstrous  device  and  clumsy 
execution,  to  abate  the  reverence  of  Hindoo  devotion  toward 
the  objects  expressed  in  this  visible  language.  The  missionary, 
if  an  acute  observer,  might  perceive  how  rays  of  malignant  but 
imperative  influence  strike  from  such  objects  upon  the  faculties 
of  his  auditors,  to  be  as  it  were  reflected  in  their  looks  of  disbe- 
lief and  disdain  upon  the  preacher  of  the  new  doctrine.    What 

D 


26 

a  strength  of  guardianship  is  thus  arrayed  in  the  very  senses 
of  the  pagan  for  tlie  dogmas  and  fables  and  immoral  principles 
established  in  his  faith  ! 

Or  we  may  suppose  the  protester  in  the  name  of  the  true 
God  to  be  led  to  the  scene  of  one  of  the  grand  periodical  cele- 
brations of  the  extraordinary  rites  of  idolatry.  There,  as  at 
the  temple  of  Jaggernaut,  contemplating  the  effect  of  an  intense 
fanaticism,  glowing  through  an  almost  infinite  crowd,  lie  may 
perceive  that  each  individual  mind  is  the  more  fitted,  by  being 
heated  in  this  infernal  furnace,  to  harden  in  a  more  decided 
form  and  stamp  of  idolatry  as  it  cools. 

The  very  riches  of  nature,  the  conformations  and  productions 
of  the  elements,  co-operate  in  this  mighty  tyranny  over  the 
mind  by  occupancy  of  the  senses.  Divinity,  while  degraded  in 
the  human  conception  of  it  in  being  diffused  through  these 
objects,  comes,  at  the  same  time,  with  a  more  immediate 
impression  of  presence,  when  flowers,  trees,  animals,  rivers, 
present  themselves,  not  as  effects  and  illustrations,  but  often  as 
substantial  participants,  or  at  least  sacred  vehicles,  of  that 
sublimest  existence,  and  the  whole  surrounding  physical  world 
is  one  vast  mythology.  In  praying  that  the  region  may  be 
cleared  of  idol  gods,  the  missionary  might  feel  the  question 
suggested  whether  he  is  not  repeating  Elijah's  prayer  for  tli« 
withholding  of  rain,  which  would  certainly  do  much  toward 
vacating  tlic  pantheon,  by  the  destruction  of  the  flowers,  trees, 
animals,  and  streams. 

This  great  enemy,  against  which  we  are  wishing  to  excite 
christian  zeal,  is  "  mighty"  in  the  strength  of  venerable 
antiquity.  Antiquity  is,  all  over  the  world,  the  favourite  re- 
source of  that  which  is  without  rational  evidence,  especially  so, 
therefore,  of  superstition;  and  the  Brahminical  superstition 
rises  imperially  above  all  others  in  assumption  of  dignity  from 


27 

the  past,  which  it  arrogates  as  all  its  own,  but  emphatically 
that  which  appears  the  most  solemn  by  remoteness.  Unlike 
most  other  dominations  over  human  opinion,  which  deduce 
themselves  from  an  origin,  and  attain  their  honours  in  and  by 
means  of  their  enlarging  progress  downward  in  time,  this  proud 
imposture  makes  the  past,  hack  to  an  inconceivable  distance^ 
the  peculiar  scene  of  its  magnificence.  And  it  teaches  its 
devotees  to  regard  its  continued  presence  on  earth  not  as  the 
progress  of  a  cause  advancing  and  brightening  into  greatness 
and  triumpli,  but  merely  as  something  of  the  radiance  reaching 
thus  far,  and  witii  fainter  splendour,  from  that  glory  so  divine  in 
the  remote  past.  Its  primjeval  manifestation  was  of  power  to 
prolong  the  effect  to  even  this  late  period,  in  which  the  faithful 
worshippers  have  to  look  back  so  far  to  behold  the  glory  of  that 
vision  it  once  condescended  to  unfcld  on  this  world.  The  grand 
point  of  attraction  being  thus  placed  in  a  past  so  stupendous  as 
to  assume  almost  a  character  of  eternity,  the  contemplations, 
the  devotional  feelings,  and  the  self-complacency,  are  drawn 
away  in  a  retrospective  direction,  and  leave  behind  in  contempt 
all  modern  forms  of  faith  or  institution,  as  the  insignificant  fol- 
lies sprung  from  the  corruption  of  a  heaven-abandoned  period 
of  time.  The  sentiments  excited  in  them  by  the  many  signs  of 
decay  in  the  exterior  apparatus  of  their  system,  such  as  the 
ruined  state  of  innumerable  temples,  will  rather  coincide  with 
this  attraction  in  carrying  the  homage  and  the  pride  to  the 
glory  that  was  once,  than  lead  to  any  suspicion  of  a  futility  for 
which  the  system  deserves  to  grow  out  of  use.  This  retrospec- 
tive magnitude,  this  absorption  of  all  past  duration  in  their 
religion,  this  reduction  to  insignificance  of  whatever  else  has 
existed,  (if,  indeed,  all  that  has  existed  has  not  been  compre- 


28 

hcndcd  in  it)  cannot  fail  to  produce  a  degree  of  elation  in  the 
minds  of  the  Hindoos,  notwithstanding  their  incapability  of  gen- 
uine sublimity  of  conception  and  emotion. 

And  again,  however  slight  their  affections  toward  their  con- 
temporary relatives,  the  idea  of  an  ancestry  extending  back 
through  unnumbered  generations,  all  having  had  their  whole 
intellectual  and  moral  existence  involved  inseparably  in  their 
religion,  and  surrendering  in  succession  their  souls  to  become  a 
kind  of  guardians  or  portions  of  it,  must  add  a  more  vital  prin- 
ciple of  attraction  to  the  majestic  authority  and  sanction  of  such 
an  antiquity.  Generations  of  little  account  in  their  own  times 
may  acquire,  when  passed  away,  to  be  contemplated  as  ances- 
try, a  certain  power  over  the  imagination  by  becoming  invested 
with  something  of  the  character  of  another  world, — a  vencra- 
blcness  which  combines  with  and  augments  the  interest  which 
they  hold  in  our  thoughts  as  having  once  belonged  to  our  mortal 
fraternity.  This  combined  interest  going  wholly  into  the  sen- 
timents of  religion,  in  the  pagans  of  whom  we  speak,  they  will 
feel  as  if  a  violation  of  that  would  be  an  insult  to  each  of  the 
innumerable  souls  of  the  great  religious  family  departed,  all 
worthier  of  respect  than  any  that  arc  now  living  in  the  world 
from  which  they  have  vanished.  This  habitual  reference  to 
their  ancestors,  with  a  certain  sense  of  responsibility,  is  main- 
tained by  various  notions  and  rites  of  their  superstition, 
expressly  contrived  for  the  purpose,  as  well  as  by  the  pride 
which  they  can  all  feel,  though  they  be  but  little  sensible  to  the 
kind  of  poetical  charm  which  might  be  felt,  in  tlius  standing 
connected,  through  identity  of  religious  character  and  economy, 
with  the  remotest  antiquity. 

Nor  can  the  influence  be  small,  in  the  way  of  confirmed 
sanction  and  cherished  pride,  of  beholding  that  wliich  has  been 
the  element  of  the  moral  existence  of  an  almost  infinite  train  of 


29 

predecessors,  attested  still,  as  to  its  most  material  parts,  by  a 
world  of  beings  at  this    hour  coinciding  with  the  devotee,  in 
regarding  it  as  their  lionoiir,  tlieir  sanctity,  and  their  supreme 
law.      Let  the  Hindoo  direct  his  attention  or  his  travels  which- 
ever way  he  will,  within  the  circuit  of  a  thousand  leagues,  he 
meets  with  a  crowding  succession,  without  end,  of  living  think*- 
ing  creatures  who  live  and  think  but  to  believe  and  act  as  he 
does.     And  what,  in  effect,  do  they  all  think  and  act  so  for,  but 
as  evidence  that  he  is  right  ?     The  mind  can  rest  its  assurance 
of  its  own  rectitude  of  persuasion  on  this  wide  concurrence  of 
belief,  without  therefore  acknowledging  to  itself  a  degrading 
dependence.      Its  mode  of  seeing  the  matter  is,  not  that  the 
faith  of  a  large  assemblage  of  other  minds  is  its  faith,  but  that 
its  faith  is  tJieirs;   not — I  think  and  act  as  they  do,  but,  Tliey 
think  and  act  as  I  do.        This  sort  of  ambitious  expansion  out- 
ward,  from  the  individual  as  a  centre,  saves  his  pride  of  rea- 
son from  being  humiliated  by  the  consideration  of  the  sameness 
of  his  notions  with  those  of  the  great  mass.     The  sense  of  com- 
munity in  human  nature  is  strongly  and  delightfully  admit! ed, 
when  agreeing  multitudes  corroborate  a  man's  opinions  without 
depriving  him  of  the  self-complacency  of  believing  that  he  holds 
them  in  the  strength  of  his  own  wisdom. 

This  corroborating  influence  of  the  consent  of  contemporary 
multitude  in  the  most  essential  joints  of  the  system,  has,  as  we 
have  already  hinted,  its  effect  among  the  Hindoos  even  without 
the  intervention  of  social  affection.  Never  did  any  where  a 
greater  number  of  human  creatures  exist  together  with  so  littlo 
of  the  attacliments  of  kindred  and  friendsliip.  It  is  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  tendency  of  their  superstition,  tliat  it  nearly 
abolishes  these  interests,  keeping  the  whole  population  in  tljc 
state  of  detached  and  most  selfisli  particles.  '  This  seems  indeed 
to  be  foregoing  one  of  the  strongest  means  of  power,  since  a 


30 

sjstcm  of  notions  and  moral  principles  might  find  the  greatest 
account  in  so  combining  itself  with  the  affections  of  nature  as  to 
engage  them  for  auxiliaries.      But  then  what  a  triumph  of  this 
bad  cause  that  wliilc,  instead  of  enticing  these  cliarities  into  its 
semice  it  tramples  on  and  destroys  them,  it  can  notwithstand- 
ing make  this  assemblage  of  dissocial  selfish  beings  act  upon 
one  another  in  confirmation  of  their  common  delusion,  with  an 
effect  even  greater  than  that  which  might  have  arisen  from 
friendly  sympathy.      Of  little  wortji  in  one  another's  esteem  as 
relatives-  and  friends,  it  is  as  things  which  the  gods  have  set 
their  stamp  upon  that  they  have  their  grand  value.     Tlie  re- 
ligion is  regarded  as  attaching  in  so  very  personal  a  manner 
to  all  its  subjects,  that  they  have  the  effect  of  figures  sculptured 
on  their  temples,  or  of  leaves  of  their  sacred  books  of  mythol- 
ogy.     The  seal  or  brand  of  the  deities  set  upon  them  docs  not 
indeed  dignify  them  all,  but  it  makes  them  all  vouchers  to  the 
religion.       They  all  in  conjunction  personify,  as  it  were,  that 
system  which  as  much  requires  the  existence  of  Soodras  to 
verify  it  as  of  Brahmins.      The  «  miry  clay"  of  the  feet  is  as 
essential  a  part  as  the  i-oyal  material  of  the  head. 

Thus  the  vast  multitude  are  made  to  serve  just  as  surety  to 
one  another,  and  all  to  each,  for  the  verity  of  the  stjpcrstition. 
And  as  the  existence  of  any  of  them  on  any  other  account  had 
been  impertinent,  their  existence  in  such  prodigious  numbers 
must  needs  seem  to  demonstrate  a  mighty  importance  in  that 
for  evidence  and  exemplification  of  which  it  was  worth  while 
for  them  to  be  so  many. 

"With  so  despotic  a  command  over  the  people's  minds,  it 
would  have  been  strange  if  this  empire  of  delusion  had  for- 
borne  to  assume  the  advantage  and  security  of  those  temporali- 
ties, which  no  other  spiritual  tyranny  was  ever  abstracted 
enough  to  forget,  and  which,  indeed,  it  would  have  been  fool- 


31 

ish  impolicy  to  forget.  Indirectly  it  possesses  this  mode  of 
strength  in  having  for  its  subjects  the  princely  and  opulent 
persons  of  tlie  community.  Their  secular  rank  renders  service, 
not  only  by  its  natural  influence  on  the  people  of  lower  con- 
dition, but  by  the  homage  of  an  acknowledged  intrinsic  inferi- 
ority of  that  rank  to  the  highest  of  the  distinctions  founded  in 
religion.  Their  mansions,  gardens,  and  groves,  arc  made  to 
testify,  by  all  the  permanent  signs  of  dedication,  that  their 
property  and  state  arc  held  under  the  paramount  rites  of  the 
divinities.  But  these  divinities  have  also  their  direct  revenues, 
in  the  form  of  fixed,  many  of  them  ancient,  appropiiations, 
with  the  addition  of  an  undefined  right  of  exaction,  enforced  by 
priests  and  consecrated  mendicants  upon  the  religious  charity 
of  the  people.  This  charity  is  in  one  sense  voluntary ;  but 
when  it  is  considered  with  what  lofty  pretensions  these  appli- 
cants make  their  demands,  (not  unfrequently  even  assuming 
some  mode  of  identity  with  the  gods  themselves)  and  what  ben- 
efits or  curses  are  declared,  and  by  tlie  people  believed,  to 
depend  infallibly  on  their  surrendering  or  withliolding  the 
tribute  required,  it  is  easy  to  judge  how  much  these  offerings, 
and  their  quantity  are  left  to  free  will.  Their  own  rights  and 
those  of  their  idols  might  be  trusted,  for  the  power  of  maintain- 
ing them,  to  men  whose  demands  of  a  share  of  the  superstitious 
cultivator's  produce  are  to  be  resisted  at  the  believed  hazard  of 
a  blast  on  the  whole. 

As  if,  however,  such  endowments,  and  such  force  of  requisi- 
tion, had  left  cause  to  fear  that  this  infernal  hierarchy  should 
become  deficient  in  the  substantial  resources  for  preserving  its 
dominion  of  delusion  and  iniquity,  the  Cliristian  Government 
over  India  has  sought  the  lionour  of  being  its  auxiliary ;  in 
which  capacity  it  is  at  onee  accepted  and  despised  by  the  de- 
scendants of  Brahma.      The  aid  has  been  afforded  not  simply 


in  the  way  of  securing,  in  observance  of  the  principle  of  toler- 
ation, the  pjigan  worship  and  means  of  worship  from  violent 
interference,  but  in  the  form  of  a  positive  active  patronage. 
The  administration  of  the  funds  for  the  ceremonial  and  abomi- 
nations of  idolatry,  has  been,  to  a  very  great  extent,  taken 
under  the  authoiity  and  care  of  the  reigning  power,  composed 
of  persons  zealous  on  this  nearer  side  of  a  certain  extent  of 
water  for  the  established  christian  religion,  which  establish- 
ment has  also  been  recently  extended  to  that  further  side, — 
with  what  effect  toward  exploding,  or  even  modifying,  this  very 
marvellous  policy,  or  whether  deemed  to  be  perfectly  harmoni- 
ous with  it,  we  must  wait  to  be  informed.  In  the  mean  time, 
the  religious  public  is  amply  informed  of  a  course  of  measures 
having  been  deliberately  pursued  tending  to  support  and  pro- 
long the  ascendency  of  paganism.  It  has  been  disclosed  to 
their  view  that  the  highest  authority  has  taken  upon  itself  the 
regulation  of  the  economy  of  idols'  temples,  has  restored  endow- 
ments wliich  had  been  alienated,  and  has  made  additional 
allowances  from  the  public  revenue,  where  the  existing  appro- 
priations have  been  judged  inadequate  to  preserve  to  those 
establishments  the  requisite  dignity ; — requisite  for  what,  but 
to  prevent  any  relaxation  of  the  hold  which  the  imposture  has 
on  the  people  ?  And,  be  it  remembered,  the  rcvemic  which  is 
to  afford  this  aid  is  constantly  pressing  heavily  for  its  means 
of  competence  on  the  distressed  resources  of  this  christian 
country. 

We  cannot  presume  to  conjecture  how  much  sooner  this  ac- 
cessional  mean  of  power  will  begin  to  fail,  than  those  ancient 
ones,  with  which  the  system  was  invested  when  none  of  its  gods 
or  sages  could  have  forseen  a  reserve  of  assistance  in  such  a 
quarter.  Perhaps  a  confidence, — entertained  upon  the  assu- 
rance of  that  spirit  whose  prophets  were  once  before  trusted  in 


33 

by  a  government, — a  confidence  tliat  this  pagan  system  will  be 
permanent,  contributes  to  prevent  any  alarm  respecting  the 
kind  of  judicial  notice,  which  the  Governor  of  the  world  might 
take  of  its  christian  supporters,  in  the  event  of  his  striking  it 
down. 

You  will  all  perceive  the  propriety  of  our  adverting  to  this 
melancholy  topic,  in  a  train  of  observations  designed,  as  we 
have  said  before,  not  as  any  attempt  at  a  summary  of  the  com- 
ponent matters  of  the  Hindoo  superstition,  but  as  a  slight  illus- 
tration of  the  cireumstauecs  through  which  it  has  so  firm  a 
command  of  the  minds  of  the  people.  To  avail  ourselves  once 
more  of  the  precise  terms  of  our  Text,  by  which  terms,  in 
truth,  it  was  that  the  particular  course  of  observations  we  are 
pursuing  was  suggested,  we  are  shewing  how  "  mighty"  is  that 
enemy  against  which  the  servants  of  God  are,  in  the  present 
instance,  summoned  to  his  "help."  And  how  much  all  the 
other  means  of  efficacy,  possessed  by  a  superstition,  are  rein- 
forced by  the  direct  patronage  of  tlie  government  of  a  country, 
is  as  obvious  to  common  sense  as  it  is  too  notorious  in  all  Jiis- 
tory. 

If  we  add  to  all  these  modes  and  causes  of  the  mightiness  of 
this  superstition,  the  indefatigable  activity  of  the  powers  of 
darkness,  meaning  literally,  infernal  intelligences,  which  we 
believe  to  be  busy  in  this  world,  it  might  be  readily  admitted, 
we  should  imagine,  that  there  is  nothing  in  it  worthier  to  have 
sprung  from  the  inspiration,  or  to  be  kept  in  force  by  the  ener- 
gy, of  such  wills  and  agencies.  If  there  are  theologians  who 
deny  the  intervention  of  such  a  cause  in  this  enormity  of  most 
malignant  evil,  is  it,  perhaps,  that  tliey  feel  some  need  and  use 
of  its  being  laid  to  the  sole  account  of  man,  for  supporting  that 
other  favourite  opinion  of  theirs,  which  denies  the  radical  cor- 
ruption of  human  nature  ?     What  new  hopes,  or  consistencies, 

E 


34 

or  faculties,  for  the  prosecution  of  this  warfare,  might  be  affor- 
ded by  their  view  of  the  matter,  which  makes  the  human 
nature  to  be  so  excellent,  and  makes  all  this  to  be  its  sponta- 
neous product,  it  would  be  of  no  use  for  us  to  stay  to  inquire, 
since  it  is  our  destiny  to  proceed  in  the  contest  under  the  no- 
tion, that  such  a  magnitude  of  evil  can  be  no  less  than  the 
leagued  depravity  of  two  bad  natures.  Those  who  can  ascribe 
it  all  to  one,  and  at  the  same  time  entertain  a  high  veneration 
for  that  one,  would  seem  to  make  a  no  very  contemptible  ap- 
proximation, in  point  of  rationality,  toward  the  idolati'y  of  n\  hich 
we  have  been  speaking. 

Now,  can  a  system  of  intellectual  and  moral  perversion,  of 
which  the  demoniac  energy  but  faintly  glimmers  in  this  brief 
description  of  some  of  its  characteristics,  shew  itself  in  the 
view  of  the  adherents  of  the  true  religion,  without  conveying  a 
provocation  to  their  conscience  and  zeal  to  come  forth,  in  aid  of 
any  reasonable  project  for  carrying  a  new  power  into  attack 
on  what  has,  through  so  many  ages,  maintained  its  character 
of  deficr  of  the  living  God,  in  spite  of  all  that  miglit  have  been 
supposed  to  operate  toward  its  destruction  from  time,  and  Na- 
ture, and  the  vaunted  reason  of  man  ?  Who  would  not  wish 
that  the  effect  of  the  pious  indignation,  and  prayers,  and 
inventive  study,  and  subsidiary  liberality,  of  all  good  men, 
might  be,  as  it  were  from  heaven,  to  which  this  would  all  be 
an  appeal,  reflected  in  burning  radiance  to  scorch  and  blast 
here  and  there  the  extended  array  of  idolatry,  and  at  length  to 
annihilate  it  ?  Will  not  each  one  in  our  assembly  ask  within 
himself.  Is  there  not  in  that  system,  made  up  of  so  many  de- 
pravities, some  small  part,  some  poisonous  atom,  some  serpent 
vehicle  of  an  evil  principle,  which  /  may  be  the  means  of  des- 
troying ?  And  that  minute  portion  of  active  principle,  which 
noxiously  works  on  iu  consequence  of  my  not  crushing  it, — 


may  it  not  be  accounted  to  work  in  my  name,  making  my  con- 
tribution real,  however  diminutive,  to  the  deadly  effect  of  that 
system  which  I  might  contribute  just  so  much  to  abolish  ?  But 
even  thougli  the  state  of  the  matter  were,  that  no  actual  effect 
at  all  should  result,  none  discernible  by  Him  who  discriminates 
every  thing  included  in  all  things,  still,  might  I  not  be  requi- 
red, in  mere  proof  of  my  fidelity  to  liim,  to  give  some  demon- 
stration of  hatred,  to  fling  some  practical  salutation  of  war, 
against  an  infernal  monster  that,  in  character  of  a  constellation 
of  gods,  arrogates  the  worship  of  a  large  portion  of  the  human 
race,  and  repays  it  with  perdition  ?  Can  I  hope  to  go,  with- 
out some  haunting  sense  of  dishonour,  to  that  superior  em- 
pire of  the  Almighty  where  every  possible  feeling  goes  forth  in 
devotion,  from  a  region  where  I  have  been  nearly  at  peace 
with  such  an  odious  usurpation  ? 

But  even  this  state  of  peace  with  it  has  not  been  enough  for 
some  of  our  countrymen  to  maintain :  and  we  think  the  partial- 
ity, arising  in  some  instances  almost  to  fanaticism,  which,  both 
at  home  and  abroad,  they  have  manifested  without  reserve  for 
this  grossest  paganism,  may  serve  to  enforce  our  demand  on 
christian  zeal.  It  may  do  so,  partly,  by  the  illustration  thus 
afforded  of  the  quality  of  the  design,  since  that  may  be  presum- 
ed to  be  greatly  excellent  which  has  had  the  exact  effect  of 
irritating  out  by  contrariety  the  worst  vice  lurking  in  profane 
minds  ^  and  it  may  additionally  do  so  by  the  consideration, 
that  if  a  peculiarly  odious  kind  of  depravity,  of  the  existence  of 
which  there  was  perhaps  no  previous  suspicion,  suddenly  dis- 
closes itself  in  a  nation,  there  should  be  an  extraordinary  effort 
to  promote  a  counterbalancing  good.  Such  an  effort,  besides 
that  it  is  due  to  the  honour  of  God,  would  seem  to  be  called  for 
in  behalf  of  the  character  of  a  christian  people.  It  may  also 
involve  somewhat  of  that  policy,  in  reference  to  their  welfare. 


36 

which  sober  men  would  not  easily  pronounce  superstitious  as 
exemplified  in  the  parallel  ease  of  a  ship,  in  whicli,  if  several 
of  the  passengers  were  expressly  and  ravingly  insulting  Om- 
nipotence, any  others  fearing  the  "  God  of  the  sea  and  the  dry 
land"  would  collider  an  extraordinary  degree  of  homage  ren- 
dered to  him  on  their  part,  in  direct  contravention,  a  matter 
not  altogether  foreign  to  the  safety  of  the  vessel.  If  their 
devotions  had  been,  in  the  first  instance,  the  cause  of  bringing 
out  this  malignant  impiety,  tliey  would  be  certain,  upon  the 
exhibition  of  it,  rather  to  double  than  remit  the  earnestness 
and  frequency  of  their  prayers. 

The  promoters  and  immediate  experimenters  of  a  christian 
attempt  on  the  pagans  of  the  East  naturally  expected,  in  spite 
of  the  pretended  miraculous  mildness  of  the  Hindoo  character, 
to  encounter  a  strenuous  and  perhaps  malicious  ojiposition  from 
the  idolaters.  But  it  was  hardly  within  their  calculation,  that 
a  very  considerable  number  of  persons  of  some  note  in  Eng- 
land, persons  enjoying  the  advantages  of  education  j  of  weight 
in  the  legislation,  the  mercantile  system,  and  the  literature,  of 
the  country ;  belonging  to  its  respected  ranks,  classes,  and 
professions,  (tlie  consecrated  profession  not  excepted)  and 
avowing,  for  the  most  part,  a  veneration  for  the  religious  estab- 
lishment; ^\ould  be  provoked  to  join  in  a  violent  outcry  against 
a  scheme  for  imparting  the  gospel  to  the  people  of  India ;  and 
that  their  strain  of  virulent  invective  against  the  "  pernicious 
fanaticism"  of  missionary  enterprise,  would  ever  and  anon  be 
heard  modulating  itself  into  an  expression  of  favour  and  rever- 
ence for  the  execrable  superstition  threatened  by  that  enter- 
prise. Its  pious  projectors  were  not  fully  apprised  how  prone 
men  are  to  have  a  partial  feeling  toward  a  religion  which  it  is 
clearly  safe  for  them  to  make  light  of  in  their  hearts.  They 
are  so  because,  through  its  generic  quality,  (of  religion)  it 


37 

somewhat  assists  them  to  make  light  of  a  more  formidable 
thing  of  that  quality  and  name.  It  comes,  probably,  with  a 
great  shew  of  claims, — antiquity,  pretended  miracles,  and  an 
immense  number  of  believers  :  it  may  nevertheless  be  disbe- 
lieved with  most  certain  impunity.  Under  the  advantage  of 
this  disbelief  with  impunity,  the  mind  ventures  to  look  toward 
other  religions,  and  at  last  toward  the  Christian.  That  also 
has  its  antiquity,  its  recorded  miracles,  and  its  multitude  of 
believers.  Tiiougli  there  may  not,  perhaps,  be  impious  assu- 
rance enough  to  assume  formally  the  equality  of  the  preten- 
sions in  the  two  cases,  there  is  a  successful  eagerness  to  escape 
from  the  evidence  tiiat  the  appai'cnt  similarity  is  slight  and 
superficial ;  and  the  irreligious  spirit  springs  rapidly  and  glad- 
ly, in  its  disbelief,  from  the  one,  as  a  stepping-place,  to  the 
other.  But  that  which  affords  such  an  important  convenience 
for  sin-mounting  the  awe  of  the  true  religion,  will  naturally  be 
a  great  favourite,  even  at  the  very  moment  it  is  seen  to  be 
contemptible,  and  indeed,  in  a  sense,  in  consequence  of  its  being 
so*  Complacency  mingles  with  the  very  contempt  for  that 
from  which  contempt  may  rebound  on  Christianity. 

These  fierce  advocates  of  paganism  it  were  in  vain  to  warn 
of  a  time,  when  the  summons  to  them  will  be  in  effect,  to 
«  come  forth  against  the  Lord,"  if  they  dare  then  repeat  their 
well  remembered  words  of  reverence  for  idolatry  ;  if  they  dare 
then, — when  their  profane  affectation  of  a  liberal  homage  to  all 
«  religions"  as  proper  and  good  for  their  respective  parts  of  the 
world,  will  sink  in  an  insufferable  conversion  to  the  one  true 
religion  ;  and  when  the  merits  of  that  estimate  in  which  the 
people's  condition  towards  God  is  held  a  matter  infinitely  sub- 
ordinate to  the  consideration  of  what  they  ai-e  with  respect  to 
government  and  trade,  will  be  illustrated,  in  so  many  millions 
of  souls  assembled  for  retribution,  with  eternal  existence  before 


38 

» 

them,  and  all  the  material  of  that  secular  condition,  with  refer- 
ence to  which  alone  they  had  heen  regarded,  ready  to  be  burnt 
up.  Then  will  such  men  meet  their  accoimt  with  the  imjws- 
toi-s  and  apostates,  and  whatever  other  enemies  of  Christ  will 
hear  with  the  most  emphatic  despair  the  sentence.  Behold  ye 
despisers,  and  wonder,  and  perish.  It  can  be  of  no  use,  we  re- 
peat, to  admonish  them  ;  but  we  may  urge  it  on  the  friends  of 
true  religion  and  tiie  illumination  of  the  world,  tliat  to  this  phe- 
nomenon of  a  zealous  avowal  and  effort  in  favour  of  paganism, 
in  this  christian  country,  in  this  stage  of  its  knowledge,  their 
contrary  zeal  and  exertion  should  be  what  the  living  rod  of 
Moses  was  to  the  serpents  of  the  magicians. 

It  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  acknowledged,  that  there  is  a 
great  abatement  of  the  public  manifestation  of  this  disposition 
in  favour  of  idolatry,  and  this  animosity  against  the  Indiaii 
mission.      However  unallayed  the  rancorous  sentiment  may 
remain,  it  is  a  spirit  of  which  the  display  has  proved  a  little 
incommodious  on  the  score  of  character.     Indeed,  in  the  season 
of  its  most  virulent  eruption,  some  of  the  persons  in  whom  it 
raged  thought  it  worth  whilc^  (others  were  more  bold  or  hon- 
est) to  endeavour  to  give  it  a  disguised  appearance.     It  was 
made  to  inspirit  some  argument  of  pretended  political  expe- 
diency.     It  was  vented  under  the  form  of  a  representation, 
urged   with  every  seeming  of  a  most  sincere  and  wrathful 
earnestness,  that  missionary  proceedings  permitted  but  a  very 
little  while  longer,  would  infallibly  work  tlie  destruction  of  th© 
British  empire  in  Asia,  although  it  is  probable  they  all  laughed 
in  private  at  such  as  miglit  be  simple  enough  to  let  themselves 
become,  upon  this    representation,   affecte<l    with  tiiis  panic. 
Sucli  assertions  were  hazarded  in  a  sanguine  confidence,  for 
which  it  is  a  lamentable  reflection  on  our  country  that  there 
should  have  been  no  slight  grounds,  that  the  matter  would  ngt 


39 

be  suffered  to  proceed  to  the  trial.  But  a  power  from  heaven 
interposed,  acting  partly  by  the  instrumentality  of  the  zeal  of 
the  religious  part  of  the  community ;  tlie  Government  were 
decided  to  prolong  tlie  impunity  of  the  reviled  missionaries, 
which  has  silenced  many  that  were  incapable  of  feeling  any 
restraint  from  the  fear  of  God  ;  and  time  and  experience  have 
brought  contempt  on  all  their  rant  and  prognostication. 

We  have  alluded  to  such  men  only  to  gain  from  them  a  ser- 
vice for  which  we  shall  owe  them  no  thanks.  Religion  shoidd 
keep  pace  with  pliysical  science  in  the  art  of  making  noxious 
things  contribute  to  salutary  operations.  No  moral  force,  how- 
ever bad  in  origin  and  principle,  should,  when  it  cannot  be  an- 
nihilated, be  left  free  from  attempts  to  beguile  it  to  promote  a 
contrary  purpose  to  that  which  it  naturally  intends ;  and  we 
wish  to  make  the  force  of  evil,  emanating  from  these  men's 
minds,  act  in  coincident  impulse  with  the  motives  which  sliould 
carry  the  servants  of  God  into  a  closer  and  still  more  animated 
conflict  with  the  powers  of  heathen  darkness. 

This  good  cause  has  prevailed  on  the  judgment,  and  obtain- 
ed the  practical  aid,  of  the  religious  public,  to  an  extent  which 
we  are  willing  to  regard  as  an  omen  from  heaven,  of  great  ef- 
fects to  be  accomplished  in  its  progress.  But  it  is  not  improb- 
able there  may  still  remain,  among  a  minority  of  good  men, 
some  feelings  not  quite  reconciled  to  schemes  of  such  wide 
scope,  soch  interminable  demands  of  assistance,  and  such  a  dis- 
tant field  of  execution ;  schemes,  in  short,  of  which  the  greater 
portion  of  the  cultivated  community  have  but  recently  beguii 
to  moderate  the  ridicule  poured  on  them  as  fanatical  and  im- 
practicable. 

There  is  much  difference  of  mental  constitution  for  receiving 
the  impression  of  such  projects.  There  is  a  class  of  good  men 
naturally  formed  to  be  exceedingly  sober,  and  cautious,  and 


40 

deliberate,  and  anxious  for  all  things  to  be  kept  in  riglit  propor- 
tions and  manageable  compass.  Excellent  qualities  ;  adapted 
specifically  to  some  departments  of  duty,  and  of  great  use  in 
a  certain  measure  (if  interference  in  all.  But  let  it  be  suggest- 
ed to  their  possessors,  that  there  is  perhaps  no  class  of  men  so 
apt  to  over-value  their  peculiar  endowments,  in  contra-distinc- 
tion  to  those  of  a  different  order ;  and  no  class  more  needing  to 
be  warned  of  tlic  faults  akin  to  their  virtues,  and  into  which 
those  virtues  arc  liable  to  be  insensibly  transmutted.  Nor, 
while  they  are  in  an  especial  manner  ready  to  take  credit  to 
themselves  for  independence  of  judgment,  are  there  any  good 
men  whose  feelings  and  opinions  are  more  at  the  mercy  of 
those  from  whom  they  differ,  no  class  being  liable  to  be  driven 
further  on  one  side  the  middle  line,  in  a  concern  of  duty,  by 
what  appears  to  them  an  extreme  on  the  other.  And  in  their 
own  extreme,  when  they  have  once  taken  their  jiosition  there, 
they  will  maintain  themselves  with  all  that  stiffness  of  temper 
which,  to  deserve  the  name  of  firmness  or  independence,  ought 
to  have  kept  them  out  of  it. 

It  may  be  conceded  to  these  worthy  men,  that  the  advocates 
of  missions  have  not  always  avoided  extravagance.  Especial- 
ly when  under  the  influence  of  a  large  assembly,  supposed  to 
be  animated  by  interests  which  extend  to  the  happiness  of  a 
world,  they  may  have  been  excited  to  use  a  language  which 
seemed  to  magnify  these  interests,  and  the  projects  in  which 
they  were  embodied,  at  the  expense  of  all  other  duties  and  con- 
cerns :  insomuch  that  some  of  those  extra  prudent  friends  of 
ours,  in  the  auditory,  have  been  wondering  what,  at  that  rate 
of  devotement  of  time,  exertion,  and  money,  we  arc  to  do,  not 
only  with  the  other  claims  of  religious  duty,  but  with  the  whole 
ordinary  economy  of  life,  pressing  upon  us  as  it  docs  with  so 
many  peremptory  demands.   But  allowance  must  be  made  for  a 


41 

little  excess  in  the  pleader  of  such  a  cause.    Its  great  import- 
ance, of  which  he  is  at  all  times  soberly  certain,  expands  into 
a  kind  of  dazzling  magnificence  before  him  when  a  thousand 
minds  seem  to  be  contemplating  it  in  sympathy  with  him.      It 
appears  to  him  as  with  a  reflection  of  all  the  complacent  re- 
gards which  those  minds  are  fixing  upon  it.      Under  such  a 
temporary  animating  influence,  all  the  topics  and  arguments 
which  he  has  previously  accumulated  in  favour  of  the  selected 
subject,  become  as  it  were  dilated  and  on  fire,  without  any  in- 
tentional exaggeration ;    and  unless  he  had  a  capacity  like  Ba- 
con, of  keeping  all  subjects  within  his  view  almost  at  once,  in 
their  relative  proportions  as  in  a  map,  lie  will  naturally  repre- 
sent the  claims  of  the  selected  one  in  terms  partaking  a  little 
too  much  of  ambition  and  monopoly.      We  cannot  wonder  that 
our  calculating  fiiends  should  be  making,  in  their  minds,  a 
strong  protest  against  this  excess  ^    but  they  are  aware  how 
little  they  need  entertain  any  apprehension  for  its  consequen- 
ces;   as  well    knowing  that  the  persons  addressed  are  never 
betrayed  into  such  enthusiasm,  as  to  forget  to  take  the  practi- 
cal standard  of  their  duty  at   a  sufficient  reduction  of    the 
requirement  made  or  implied  in  the  hyperbolical  language  of 
the  advocate. 

While,  however,  some  concession  is  thus  made  to  the  cau- 
tious good  men,  who  are  more  afraid  of  extravagance  than  of 
any  otlier  error  in  designs  for  promoting  religion,  they  must  be 
told,  that  it  would  have  been  an  ill  fate  for  Christianity  in  the 
world,  if  christians  of  their  temperament  could  always  havd 
held  the  ascendency  in  projecting  its  operations.  If  they 
would  for  a  moment  put  themselves,  in  imagination,  in  the  caso 
©f  being  contemporary  with  Wickliff,  or  with  Luther,  and  of  be- 
ing applied  to  by  one  of  these  daring  spirits  for  advice,  we  may 

F 


42 

ask  what  counsel  they  can  suppose  themselves  to  have  given  ? 
They  cannot  but  be  instantly  conscious  tliat,  though  they  had 
been  protestants  at  heart,  their  disposition  would  have  been  to 
array  and  magnify  the  objections  and  dangers ;  to  dwell  in 
emphatic  terms  on  the  inveterate,  all  comprehensive,  and  re- 
sistless dominion  of  the  papal  church,  established  in  every  soul 
and  body  of  the  people  ;  on  the  vigilance  and  prompt  malignity 
of  the  priests ;  and  on  the  insignificance,  as  to  any  effect,  of  an 
obscure  individual's  efforts  against  an  immense  and  marvellous- 
ly well  organized  system  of  imposture  and  depravity,  even  if 
that  individual  could  be  beguiled  enough  to  expect,  that  his 
protestation  would  not  soon  bring  him  to  encounter  the  vltima 
ratio  of  his  provoked  enemy,  in  the  form  of  tribunals,  dungeons 
and  death.  In  short,  if  in  tliose  instances  such  counsel  liad 
been  acted  upon  as  they  would  have  given,  that  zeal  which 
was  kindling  and  destined  to  lay  a  great  part  of  the  mightier 
Babylon  in  ashes,  would  have  smouldered  and  expired  in  a 
languid  listless  hope,  that  the  Almighty  would  sometime  create 
such  a  juncture  of  circumstances  as  sliould  admit  an  attempt  at 
reformation  without  the  folly  and  danger  of  useless  temerity. 
And  so  we  might,  but  for  Wickliff  and  Luther,  have  been  im- 
mersed in  the  half  paganism  of  popery  at  this  very  day. 

And  to  descend  to  the  undertaking  in  favour  of  which  we  ar« 
at  present  assembled ; — all  that  has  been  accomplished  by  it  in 
India,  and  is  now  accomplishing,  as  introductory,  we  trust,  to  a 
religious  change  not  less  glorious  or  extensive  than  the  Refor- 
mation, may  be  regarded  by  its  active  friends  as,  in  somo 
sense,  a  reward  for  having  refused  to  be  controuled  by  the  dis- 
suasive arguments,  and  desponding  predictions,  of  many  very 
worthy  dcprecators  of  rashness  and  enthusiasm. 


43 

It  is  from  tliis  quarter  that  we  may  hcai'  disapprobation  in 
form  of  the  question,  Wliat  can  we  do  against  an  evil  of  such 
enormous  magnitude,  and  so  consolidated  ?  It  may  be  answer- 
ed, (and  this  has  indeed  been  already  suggested)  What  you 
ean  do,  in  the  sense  of  what  precise  quantity  of  effect  a  severe 
calculation  may  promise  from  a  given  effort,  is  not  always  to  be 
tlie  rule  of  conduct;  for  this  would  be  to  deny  the  absolute  au- 
thority of  the  Divine  Master.  We  refuse  to  obey  him  for  his 
own  sake,  and  refuse  with  an  impious  arrogance,  if  we 
insist  on  being  endowed,  or  on  the  right  of  acting  as  if  we  could 
be  endowed,  with  his  own  foresight  of  consequences,  that  fore- 
sight on  which,  we  may  presume,  are  founded  the  wise  reasons 
of  his  commands.  It  may  be  added,  that  the  contrary  spirit 
has  been  signally  honoured,  inasmucji  as  some  of  the  most  effec- 
tual and  the  noblest  services  rendered  to  God  in  all  time,  have 
begun  much  more  in  the  prompting  of  zeal  to  attempt  some- 
thing for  him,  as  it  were  at  all  hazards,  than  in  rigorous  esti- 
mates of  the  probable  measure  of  effect. 

We  may  observe  also,  how  all  history  abounds  with  great 
effects  from  little  causes,  tlius  indeed  representing  a  prevailing 
fact  in  the  constitution  of  tlie  world.  Some  such  consequences 
now  existing  in  magnitude,  bear  a  peculiarity  of  character 
which  will  hardly  allow  us  to  look  at  them  without  a  reference 
to  their  origination ;  others  have  -so  blended  in  the  conformation 
of  the  ordinary  state  of  things,  that  they  do  not  necessarily  nor 
readily  suggest  the  thought  of  their  first  causes.  The  actual 
condition  of  our  part  of  the  world  consists  of  a  number  of  grand, 
distinguishable,  though  combined  effects,  at  various  distances 
from  their  respective  primary  causes ;  how  interesting  it 
would  be  to  survey  backward  their  progress ;  but  they  are  so 
familiarlised  around  us  that  we  are  seldom  reminded  of  the 
manner  and  the  diminutiveness  in  which  they  be^an.     A  roys- 


/ 


44 

terious  hand  threw  a  particle  of  a  cause,  if  we  may  so  speak, 
among  the  elements ;  it  had  the  principle  of  attraction  in  it ; 
it  found  something  akin  to  it  to  combine  with,  obtaining  so  an 
augmentation,  to  be  instantly  again  augmented,  of  the  attract- 
ing and  assimilating  power,  wbicli  grew  in  a  ratio  that  became 
at  length  stupendous ;  and  it  exhibits  the  final  result,  (if  any 
result  yet  attained  could  be  called  final)  in  perhaps  a  grand 
modification  of  the  condition  of  a  people,  a  continent,  a  largo 
portion  of  the  globe.  What  was  the  commencement  of  the  true 
religion  in  this  land,  and  of  those  several  reformations  wliich 
have  partly  restored  it  from  its  corruptions  ?  And  what  would 
be  the  term  of  proportion,  according  to  our  principles  of  judg- 
ing, between  the  object  as  seen  in  the  diminutiveness  of  the 
incipient  cause,  and  in  its  present  extent  of  prevalence  ? — be- 
tween, (if  we  may  be  allowed  the  figure)  the  germ  in  tlie  acorn 
and  the  majestic  oak  ? 

A  result  tiius  growing  to  an  immense  magnitude  from  a  cause 
apparently  so  inconsiderable  at  the  commencement,  is  the  col- 
lective consequence  of  a  great  number  of  causes  progressively 
starting  and  multiplying  into  consentaneous  operation,  each  of 
them  respectively  having  in  the  same  manner  its  enlarging 
series  of  consequences.  And  in  looking  to  tiie  future  progress 
of  this  undertaking  in  India,  is  it  iiot  perfectly  rational  to 
assume,  that  many  small  means  and  little  events  will  be,  in 
their  respective  times  and  places,  the  commencements,  and  in 
a  sense  the  causes,  of  trains  of  consequences  interminably  ad- 
vancing and  enlarging  ? 

For  example,  we  may  imagine  the  destiny  of  some  particular 
copy  of  the  Bible  or  New  Testament,  in  one  of  the  native  lan- 
guages ;  and  an  emphatic  interest  would  attach  to  such  a 
volume,  could  there  be  any  sign  to  indicate  this  destiny,  at  the 
Kiomcnt  of  its  issuing  from  the  reiwsitory.     It  may  be  supposed 


45 

to  come  into  the  hands,  in  a  way  much  like  casualty,  of  a  heath- 
en somewhat  more  thoughtful  than  his  companions.  Disgust  op 
indignation  at  the  first  aspect  of  what  he  finds  there  may 
prompt  liim  to  throw  away  the  book,  which  he  may  perceive  to 
be  virtually  an  impeachment  of  his  religion,  his  gods,  his 
priests,  and  himself.  But  a  certain  disquiet,  of  curiosity  ming- 
led with  a  deeper  sentiment,  shall  have  seized  him,  and  shall 
impel  him,  as  by  facination,  to  that  book  again :  he  slinll  feel 
as  if  the  eye  of  a  spectre  had  glanced  upon  iiim.  A  rising  sus- 
picion that  all  within  him,  and  around  him,  may  have  been 
wrong,  shall  be  aggravated  by  repeated  perusal  to  full  convic- 
tion ;  while  the  dawn  of  the  true  liglit  and  of  a  happier  state  is 
breaking  on  the  night  of  his  soul.  Communications  and  discus- 
sions with  his  relatives  and  neighbours  may  accompany  tlie 
latter  part  of  this  process  ;  and  liis  finally  complete  persuasion 
will  be  followed  by  zealous  exertions  to  impart  what  he  will 
deem  the  greatest  good  on  earth.  The  vast  majority  will  ob- 
durately resist ;  but  within  a  year  he  sliall  find  one  or  two,  and 
in  the  next  several  more,  surrendering  to  the  same  convictions, 
and  then,  as  it  were  instinctively,  unfolding  their  new  faitli  as 
a  net  for  proselytes.  Who  shall  presume  to  say  what  the  con- 
sequence may  not  be  in  fifty  or  in  thirty  years  ?  Which  of  our 
christian  deriders  of  the  madness  of  missionary  hopes,  would 
venture  to  pledge  his  fortune  for  the  inviolateness,  half  a  centu- 
ry hence,  of  those  shrines  and  idols,  at  present  frequented  and 
adored  in  tlie  district  where  such  a  man  is  perhaps  at  this  hour 
beginning,  by  tlie  intrusion  of  the  supposed  Bible,  to  be  dis- 
turbed in  his  «  unchangeable  opinions  and  rites,'*  as  these 
christians  have  so  often  pronounced  them  ? 

We  may  without  extravagance  suppose  these  events  to  hap- 
pen in  a  great  number  of  instances,  here  and  there  in  that 
realm  of  darkness ;   and  we  might  add  many  other  diminutive 


46 

incidents  and  agents.  The  possible  effects  of  a  few  tracts, 
conveyed  in  a  manner  appearing  at  first  unaccountable,  to  a 
great  distance  from  the  place  where  they  may  have  been  put 
into  pagan  hands,  by  good  men  little  apprised  of  the  dignified 
appointment  with  whicli  those  humble  gifts  left  their  own,  has 
been  delightfully  exemplified  in  some  of  the  rather  recent  ac- 
counts of  the  mission.  Among  the  little  causes  thus  presented 
to  the  imagination  as  destined  to  produce  great  effects,  will  ap- 
pear some  images  of  the  infantine  countenances  of  the  pupils 
now  taught,  and  hereafter  to  be  taught,  in  those  numerous 
schools  brought  into  existence  by  this  mission,  not  indeed  con- 
trived for  proselytizing,  as  the  immediate  purpose,  but  certain 
to  contribute  to  it  indirectly  in  the  course  of  years. 

You  are  glad  to  admit  how  reasonable,  how  sober,  it  is  to 
expect  that  many  such  apparently  inconsiderable  things  will 
thus  grow  to  magnitude  in  the  progress  of  their  effects  contrib- 
utary  to  the  success  of  the  good  cause.  But  it  will  occur  to 
you  that,  in  imagining  these  diminutive  causes,  we  have  not 
begun  quite  at  their  beginning.  It  is  a  pleasing  thing  to  see, 
in  the  hands  of  the  supposed  pagan,  the  book  or  tract  which 
may  thus  explode  his  superstition,  and  perhaps  be  the  cause  of 
ultimately  setting  his  temple  and  idols  on  fire ;  but  how  is  that 
formidable  substance  to  come,  gratuitously,  into  his  hands  ? 
Think  what  must  have  preceded.  Think  of  the  complicated 
process  of  its  preparation,  involving  so  many  kinds  of  work- 
manship. And  this  brings  the  train  of  the  operation  up  to  its 
originating  matter  in  your  own  hands,  a  commencement  so  long 
antecedent  to  the  pagan's  receiving  the  supposed  book,  the 
event  from  which  we  have  dated  such  pleasing  consequences, 
but  on  which  consequences  we  are  not  to  be  indulging  our  an- 
ticipative  gratulations  as  if  the  book  were  to  fall  from  tiie  sky. 
The  little  cause,  then,  which  we  may  follow  onward  in  thought 


47 

to  such  noble  effects, — see  it  deriving  iteelf  from  a  still  less, — 
a  piece  of  money ;  which  may  have  carried  its  image  atid  su- 
perscription, in  the  insignificance  of  ordinary  service,  through 
a  thousand  hands,  at  each  movement  very  harmless  to  the 
cause  of  evil,  till  it  has  come  into  that  hand  which  has  devoted 
it  to  produce  a  bible,  which  may  have  the  effect  at  length  of  a 
thunderbolt  on  an  idols'  temple.  Here  is  a  direct  answer  to 
the  question,  perhaps  very  querulously  asked,  Wliat  can  %ve 
do? 

If  it  should  be  said,  that  such  an  imagination  of  happy  re- 
sults cannot  be  an  effectual  motive,  because  no  individual  can 
be  so  bereft  of  sense  as  to  fancy  his  particular  contribution  the 
distinct  cause  of  one  of  those  trains  of  results,  even  supposing 
them  certain  to  be  realised,  we  may  confidently  ask,  whether 
a  whole  assembly  might  not  deem  themselves  honoured  if,  of 
the  variety  of  means  which  all  their  contributions  will  certainly 
bring  into  application,  one  may  reasonably  be  presumed — one 
bible,  or  tract,  or  other  instrumental  expedient — to  be  appoint- 
ed the  cause  of  so  happy  a  train  of  consequences.  And  there 
can  be  no  extravagance  in  assuming  that  this  is  probable.  In 
other  and  more  general  words,  if  we  could  calculate,  first,  the 
whole  amount  of  all  the  contributions  that  have  been  and  shall 
be  made,  and  then  the  consequence,  that  is,  the  whole  number 
of  such  distinct  trains  of  pleasing  effects  as  we  have  anticipated, 
it  is  probable  that  number  would  be  great  enough  to  allow,  by 
the  rule  of  proportion,  one  such  train  to  be  assigned  to  the 
share  which  the  liberal  contributions  of  one  large  assembly 
will  form,  in  the  whole  amount  of  what  cJiristian  liberality  will 
have  contributed. 

If  it  be  objected,  that  the  wliole  of  this  presumption,  of  great 
consequences  to  originate,  in  numerous  instances,  from  bibles 
and  small  religious  treatises  scattered  at  a  venture  among  tlio 


48 

heathens,  and  from  liere  and  there  one  ol'  their  chiklien  grow- 
ing up  into  a  preacher  of  Christianity,  partakes  too  much  of  a 
sanguine  credulity  to  he  in  conformity  to  what  wc  should  deem 
the  sound  principles  of  calculation  in  ordinary  matters, — wc 
might  reply,  for  one  thing,  tliat  these  presumptions  are  not 
founded  solely  on  speculations  of  prohability  ;  for  that  the  his- 
tory of  our  own  and  other  missions  has  recorded  a  very  consid- 
erable number  of  successes  of  truth,  commencing,  and  to  some 
extent,  progressive  in  a  manner  very  similar  to  that  we  liavo 
imagined.  But  the  chief  answer  is,  that  in  those  right  princi- 
ples of  calculation  in  ordinary  affairs,  we  do  not  acknowledge 
an  equal  authority  as  applied  to  the  higher  concern  of  promot- 
ing the  kingdom  of  Christ.  They  are  here  incompetent ; 
partly  because  the  measure  of  effect  probably  to  be  obtained 
by  the  use  of  given  means  in  this  concern  is  by  its  very  nature 
far  less  definable  ;  but  chiefly  because  there  is  another  and 
transcendent  element  in  the  calculation,  namely  the  direct  in- 
terference of  the  Divine  Energy,  in  a  manner  incomparably 
less  regulated  and,  might  we  say,  subordinated,  to  settled  ami 
known  laws,  than  in  the  conmion  course  of  nature  and  of  human 
proceedings.  Insomuch  that  to  attempt  to  impose  the  princi- 
ples established  in  the  relations  of  common  things,  as  limitary 
on  the  means,  the  cffica:;ies,  and  the  hopes,  of  a  design  for  ex- 
tending the  divine  glory,  would  be  like  leaving  the  winds  out 
of  the  account  of  forces,  in  preparing  a  vessel  for  the  ocean, 
and  thinking  only  of  oars  and  rowers. — Let  it  be  remembered 
how  Moses  was  rebuked  for  alleging  the  principles  of  ordinary 
calculation,  in  pleading  to  be  excused  from  an  enterprise  in 
wiiich  supreme  power  engaged  itself  to  attend  him. 

It  is  probable  the  chief  strength  of  whatever  reluctance  may 
still  remain  among  the  friends  of  Christianity  to  yield  their  full 
co-operation  in  projects  for  extending  that  religion  ov«r  the 


49 

heathen  world,  consists  in  a  kind  of  Religious  Fatalism,  which 
would  give  the  objection  some  such  form  as  this ; — If  that  Be- 
ing whose  power  is  almighty  has  willed  to  permit  on  earth  the 
protracted  existence  against  him  of  this  enormous  evil,  why  am 
/called  upon  to  vex  and  exhaust  myself  in  a  petty  hostility 
against  it  ?  Why,  any  more  than  to  attempt  the  extinction  of  a 
volcano  ?  If  it  were  his  will  that  this  grand  evil  should  fall, 
should  we  not  soon  feel,  without  our  having  moved  from  our 
place,  the  earthquake  of  its  mighty  catastrophe  ? 

The  objection  might  even,  in  a  degree,  assume  the  merit  of 
a  reverential  submission  to  the  sovereignty  and  mystery  of  the 
Divine  Government.  And  it  has  that  peculiar  adaptation  to  do 
mischief,  which  is  possessed  by  those  fallacies  that  come  in  the 
form  of  the  most  simple  obvious  inferences  from  some  great  and 
undeniable  truth  or  fact.  The  fact  is,  that  he  who  is  infinitely 
good  could  abolish  this  odious  superstition  if  he  willed  it ;  then, 
if  he  that  can  do  it,  if  he  would,  does  not  will  it,  why  should  we 
will  it,  tliat  cannot  ? 

We  may  question  this  objector  as  to  the  real  length  to  which 
his  opinion  or  feeling  goes.  Let  him  tell  whether  it  may  ap- 
proach to  this, — that,  the  thing  contemplated  being  permitted 
by  him  that  is  infinitely  good  and  powerful,  it  is  therefore  not 
of  a  nature  hostile  to  him,  not  of  a  tendency  directly  the  re- 
verse of  that  of  his  attributes,  not  of  deadly  malignity  to  his 
creatures;  that,  in  short,  the  brand  of  divine  reprobation 
stamped  by  both  revelation  and  reason  upon  idolatry,  and  on 
each  of  its  deceits  and  depravities  severally,  is  itself,  in  truth, 
hut  a  deceit  of  another  kind,  a  mere  accommodation  to  a  certain 
superficial  and  conventional  theory,  the  real  fact  being,  after 
all,  that  God  is  at  peace  with  the  thing  thus  reprobated. 


0 


50 

We  may  presume  he  will  instantly  reply  in  the  negative,  and 
say,  that  he  holds  this  mass  of  error  and  turpitude  to  be  intrinsi- 
Oftlly  and  incommutably  opposite  to  the  divine  goodness,  and  ho- 
liness, and  pernicious  to  man,  any  other  judgment  of  the  matter 
being,  according  to  all  fact  and  all  scripture,  utterly  and  impious- 
ly absurd,  while  the  divine  permission  of  this  great  evil  appears 
at  every  step  of  thought  but  therefore  the  more  mysterious. 

"Well  then,  we  immediately  say  to  him,  there  are  two  views, 
according  to  one  of  which  you  are  to  form  your  scheme  of 
conduct  J  on  the  one  hand,  a  mystery  in  the  divine  government, 
a  permission  infinitely  inexplicable  to  you,  and  on  the  other, 
the  most  glaring  manifestation  of  the  quality  of  the  thing  so 
permitted,  as  hateful  in  itself  and  in  the  sight  of  God.  Con- 
sider from  which  of  these  two  it  is  the  most  rational  for  you  to 
take  your  rule  of  action,  that  where  your  understanding  is 
utterly  lost,  or  tiiat  where  all  is  demonstration  or  self-evidence. 
Will  you  presume  to  ascend  up  through  the  dark  region  of 
mystery  to  the  celestial  throne,  and,  sharer  of  sovereign  intel- 
ligence, enter  into  and  act  u})on  God's  own  reasons  for  permit- 
ting the  evil ;  or  will  you  accept,  as  the  proper  element  for  you 
to  think  and  act  in,  the  clear  light  he  has  given  you,  beneath 
that  dark  region,  on  the  nature  of  things  around  you  ?  You  will 
permit  an  evil  because  God  does  so !  Be  warned  that  your 
permission  of  it  is  amicable  coincidence  with  it,  if  granted  on 
any  other  ground  than  a  perfect  comprehension  of  the  reasons 
why  he  permits  it.  Your  dilemma,  therefore,  would  be,  iden- 
tification witii  God,  or  alliance  with  his  enemy  ! 

But  perliaps  you  will  say,  that  far  from  any  tendency  to 
sueh  an  alliance,  you  are,  as  an  indispensable  pait  and  proof  of 
your  fidelity  to  God,  a  mortal  foe  of  this  foe  to  him,  in  every 
estimate  of  your  judgment  and  every  sentiment  of  your  heart; 
and  that  tlie  only  exemption  sought,  upon  the  plea  of  the  divine 


51 

permission  of  the  evil,  is,  that  you  may  be  allowed  to  remain 
quiet  with  respect  to  action,  and  not  be  summoned  to  expend 
and  waste  your  feeble  strength  on  that  which  the  almighty 
strength  spares. 

Now  in  the  first  place,  there  seems  to  be  a  most  groundless 
assumption  implied  here,  namely  the  continuance  of  this  permis- 
sion indefinitely  into  futurity ;  whereas,  for  any  thing  that 
you  can  know,  hostile  means  put  in  action  at  tliis  period  may 
coincide  with  a  divine  decree  to  terminate  that  mysterious  suf- 
ferance :  and  then,  whatever  were  the  natural  inadequacy  of 
those  means,  they  would  seem  to  have  caught  the  fire  of  Gid- 
eon's lamps,  and  be  made  to  flame  out  with  supernatural  powej 
of  rout  and  confusion  to  the  host  of  pagan  gods. 

But  in  the  next  place,  you  cannot  consistently  acknowledge 
that  the  circumstance  of  the  divine  permission  of  this  dreadful 
system  of  delusion  affords  no  particle  of  ground  for  conciliation 
to  it,  but  leaves  you  under  the  full  obligation  of  a  mortal  enmi- 
ty,— and  at  the  same  time  claim  fi-om  that  circumstance  an 
exemption  from  practical  efforts  against  it.  What  indeed  is  its 
permission  but  simply  its  existence  ?  in  virtue  of  which  it  can 
give  yoH  no  exemption  from  the  duty  of  attacking  it,  which 
would  not  be  equally  an  exemption  from  all  duty  whatever  in 
the  form  of  opposition  and  conflict,  which  would  not  confer  an 
universal  inviolability  on  evil,  and  end  practically  in  the  maxim, 
that  the  more  evil  there  is  on  earth,  the  less  there  is  for  the 
servants  of  God  to  do.  Under  which  condition  of  things  how 
impertinent,  how  worse  than  useless,  how  thriftless  of  happiness, 
were  that  pious  animation  of  feeling  which  you  are  admitting  to 
be  an  internal  duty,  that  holy  indignation  in  the  soul  against 
what  is  working  infinite  mischief  and  misery  to  a  large  portion 
of  mankind.  Vain  passion  of  christian  zeal !  Illusory  and 
almost  penal  fire  from  heaven  !  animating  the  heart  but  to  con- 


52 

same  it,  if  there  should  be  no  practical  mode  and  machinery  for 
conveying  outward  its  energy  to  strike  against  the  hated  object. 
To  have  the  mind  beset  and  filled,  as  by  main  force,  with  the 
revolting  images  of  pagan  abominations,  and  to  know  that  this 
infernal  usurpation  triumphs  in  the  slavery  of  millions  of  our 
common  family,  and  yet,  the  while,  to  submit  to  be  unfurnished 
witli  expedients  of  devout  revenge,  to  have  no  arrows,  no  pow- 
er of  throwing  reflected  convergent  sun  beams,  no  missiles 
charged  with  the  elements  most  noxious  to  a  malignant  nature, 
would  be  felt  as  a  hard  imposition  by  a  man  of  zeal,  who  would 
dread  to  have  his  soul,  in  reference  to  the  service  of  God,  in 
the  condition  of  a  hero  in  chains ;  what  sliall  we  tliink,  then,  of 
a  servant  of  God  desiring  as  an  exemption  and  a  privilege  to  be 
allowed  tiius  to  expend  away  the  vital  force  of  his  spirit  without 
action  ?  "NVe  cannot  believe  that  he  has  any  of  that  zealous 
emotion  which  he  pretends.  No,  my  good  friends,  you  must 
not  profess  to  feel  and  fulfil  a  duty  of  enmity  in  spirit  against 
the  permitted  evil,  and  at  the  same  time  acknowledge  no  duty 
of  offensive  exertion.  The  true  animosity  would  be  so  intent 
on  some  means  of  action,  that  it  is  quite  certain  tlie  state  of 
feeling  which  persuades  to  decline  such  means  is  far  too  pacific 
toward  what  is  insulting  God  and  destroying  man. 

But  it  is  still  more  plainly  to  our  purpose,  as  against  this  re- 
ligious fatalism,  to  alledge  the  matter  of  fact,  that  though  it  has 
been  the  mysterious  will  of  the  Supreme  Governor  to  permit 
such  great  evils  in  the  earth,  it  has  as  evidently  been  his  will 
to  maintain  a  continual  war  against  them.  Why  have  there 
been  any  vindictive  interpositions  of  his  among  the  inhabitants 
of  the  world  ?  Let  the  memorials  of  cities,  and  tribes,  and  na- 
tions, and  in  one  instance  a  world,  destroyed,  testify  wliether 
lie  has  set  men  the  example  of  peace  with  irreligion  and  iniqui- 
ty.    What  is  the  inscription  on  the  monuments  of  beings  that 


53 

his  vengeance  has  smitten  ?  What  has  been  the  interpretation 
required  to  be  put  on  all  the  formidable  signs  held  out  to  deter, 
and  all  the  plagues  that  have  followed  when  those  signs  warned 
in  vain  ?  None  of  the  victims  could  say  that  they  were  lying 
signs  and  wonders,  as  pretending  to  be  heaven's  protest  against 
tlie  evil  to  wliich  man  was  perverted. 

And  if  we  contemplate  the  Divine  Being  as  a  rcvcaler  of 
truth  and  a  lawgiver,  the  same  hostile  character  and  design  arc 
conspicuous.  Every  thing  lie  declared  or  dictated  is  instantly 
seen  to  be  adverse  to  something  which  it  had  not  been  his  vNili 
to  prevent  from  existing  in  human  notions  or  conduct.  Well 
indeed  might  great  alarm  be  felt  to  sec  so  very  many  things 
marked  for  men  to  be  committed  in  deadly  strife  against  j  but 
what  would  have  been  the  piety,  or  the  prudence,  or  the  conse- 
quence, of  a  remonstrance  to  him  against  so  severe  a  vocation, 
on  the  plea  that  himself  had  permitted,  and  could  have  prevent- 
ed, every  thing  that  he  was  thus  imperatively  involving  them 
in  painftd  conflict  with  over  every  step  of  ground  till  they 
should  fall  into  the  grave  ? 

We  repeat,  that  the  whole  course  of  the  extraordinary  divine 
interference  among  men  has  been  in  the  direction,  and  has 
commanded  human  spirits,  on  their  allegiance,  to  concur  in  the 
direction,  which  we  are  endeavouring  to  give  to  your  zeal.  In 
visions  and  oracles  sent  to  patriarchs,  in  deliverances  and 
avenging  inflictions,  in  the  miraculous  suspensions  of  the  laws 
of  nature,  in  institutions  of  religion,  in  the  illuminations  of 
prophets  and  apostles,  in  the  excitement  of  the  best  men  to  the 
most  invincible  pertinacity  of  warfare,  in  the  mission  of  angels, 
and,  transcendently  above  all,  in  the  "  manifestation  of  the  Son 
of  God  to  destroy  the  works  of  the  Devil," — in  all  these  forms 
of  the  divine  dispensation,  and  in  all  the  operation  that  has  been 
in  enlarging  progress  from  them  to  this  hour,  one  spirit  breathes, 


54 

one  perpetual  emanation  of  divine  will  and  agency  against  that 
which  will,  nevertheless,  he  permitted  to  retain  some  measure 
of  existence  on  the  cartli  till  a  very  late  period,  when  the 
"Lord  shall  consume  it  with  the  breath  of  his  mouth,  and  des- 
troy it  witii  the  brightness  of  his  coming." — Such  has  been  the 
spirit  of  all  the  Divine  Intervention.  The  sun  is  not  more  con- 
spicuous by  his  own  light,  than  this  character  of  the  religious 
economy. 

Now  then  for  a  professed  servant  of  God  to  refuse  acting  in 
conformity  to  this  entire  tendency  of  his  cause,  and  to  justify 
himself  on  the  ground  of  the  divine  permission  of  that  wliich  the 
cause  is  directed  against,  what  is  it  but,  in  effect,  to  say  to  tlie 
Supreme  Governor, — I  behold  two  views  of  thy  government : 
there  is  thy  permission  of  an  awful  array  and  amount  of  evils, 
and  there  is  a  system  of  thy  dispensations  framed  to  work  in 
most  direct  and  absolute  opposition  to  them.  TJie  impossibility 
of  apprehending  the  unity  of  principle  of  these  opposed  parts  of 
thy  government  throws  a  dark  mystery  on  the  one  of  them. 
But  with  me,  unlike  my  fellow-mortals  the  mystery  rests  on 
the  latter  view,  on  the  economy  constituted  for  resistance  to 
the  evil ;  wliereas  the  reason  for  its  permission  is  so  plain  to 
me  that  I  can,  in  dissent  from  all  thy  faithful  servants  since  the 
world  began,  adopt  it  as  my  rule  of  conduct.  In  pursuance  of 
this  adoption,  I  dare  to  believe  thou  art,  in  truth,  not  so  much 
the  enemy  of  this  same  Evil  as  is  pretended,  ev-en  in  thy  own 
revelation  ;  and  that  I  shall,  upon  a  certain  secret  understand- 
ing, please  thee  fully  as  well  by  declining  to  join  in  an  attack 
upon  it,  as  by  devoting  to  the  utmost  my  active  foi'ccs  to  co-op- 
erate against  it,  in  a  war  which  I  do  at  tlic  same  time  perceive 
clearly  that  thou  thyself,  for  wliat  reason  of  state  I  cannot 
conjecture,  hast  raised  and  maintained  witli  a  palpable  and  con- 
tinual interference. 


55 

Let  us  suppose  him  to  act  in  tliis  spirit  toward  Iiis  oWn  soul. 
When  he  looks  there,  he  sees  there  is  a  proportion,  a  lamenta- 
ble one,  of  "  that  abominable  thing"  which  has  rendered  the 
world  so  horrid  a  scene.  But  the  Almighty  power  has  permit- 
ted its  existence  there.  What  then  ?  Can  lie  on  that  account 
remain  quiet,  while  it  is  poisoning  the  essence  of  his  being, 
and  feel  as  if  it  were  an  homage  to  God  to  second,  if  we  may 
so  express  it,  that  permission  ?  With  plain  sad  proof  of  the 
very  active  quality  of  the  mischief,  which  seems  also  to  become, 
even  while  he  is  looking  at  it,  if  under  a  suspension  of  resis- 
tance, sensibly  stronger,  by  tlie  force  of  a  principle  of  augmen- 
tation altogether  indefinite  if  left  to  its  own  progress,  and  whicli 
tells  him,  as  in  a  demon's  accents,  that  Ins  soul  is  the  intended 
victim,  can  he  calmly  contemplate  this  permitted  state  and  op- 
»cration,  just  as  one  of  the  inexplicable  phenomena  of  the  divine 
government?  And  if  he  pretended  reverential  submission,  what 
manner  of  god  could  he  deem  himself  adoring,  that  would  be 
pleased  with  such  a  sacrifice  ?  My  brethren,  unless  his  preten- 
sions to  religion  are  false,  and  his  soul  is  actually  surrendering 
to  perdition,  he  will,  at  the  siglit  of  this  mournful  predicament 
of  his  own  spirit,  be  ardently  intent  on  an  application  of  the 
means  of  resisting  the  destroyer.  And  he  will  be  at  once 
alarmed  and  indignant  if  he  should  perceive  his  mind  admit- 
ting, under  some  influence  of  the  consideration  tliat  God  has 
not  prevented  tlie  awful  fact  of  sin  within  him,  any  slighter 
estimate  of  the  required  energy  and  promptitude  of  the  resis- 
tance, than  that  which  should  be  commensurate  to  the  evil 
itself,  viewed  absolutely,  in  all  its  atrocity  and  activity. 

But  now  let  him  revert  to  the  heathen  slaves  of  darkness  and 
sin.— If  it  would  be  cruelty  to  Ids  own  soul  to  make  the  lighter  of 
the  invasion,  or  the  means  of  expulsion,  of  its  deadly  enemy,  be- 
cause God  has  not  precluded  nor  exterminated  it,  he  may  be 


56 

reminded,  and  all  the  friends  of  Christianity  may  be  reminded, 
of  the  obligation  implied  in  the  second  great  commandment, 
"Thou  shalt  love  tliy  neighbour  as  thyself." 

Try  once  more  how  strongly  you  can  bring  upon  your  minds 
the  reality  of  an  immense  multitude  of  spirits,  of  your  own  na- 
ture, existing  on  eartii.      You  can  by  thought  place  yourselves 
as  sensibly  amidst  the  countenances,  the  vital  warmth,  the  talk, 
the  worship,  the  infelicities,  of  people  at  tlie  distance  of  some 
thousands  of  leagues,  reckoned  through  the  air,  as  of  the  inhab- 
itants of  an  adjacent  portion  of  your  own  country.      With  as 
absolute  a  sense  of  fact  as  if  you  were  at  this  hour  in  India, 
and  were  just  now  descrying  a  tyger  crouching  to  spring  on 
one  ill-fated  person,  or  a  serpent  thi-owing  its  folds  round  anoth- 
er, you  can  behold  the  prodigiously  numerous   tribe   of  souls, 
actual  living  immortal  essences,  images  and  counterparts  of 
your  own,   as  it  were  watched  for,  fascinated,  sprung  upon, 
grappled,  by  things  arisen  in  fearful  eruption  from  the  bottom- 
less pit.      Look  at  them  involved  in  the  power  of  the  Old  Ser- 
pent.    Now  suppose  the  case,  that  a  professedly  benevolent 
man,  sojourning   in  tliat  country,  happened  to  be  in  a  spot, 
where  he  saw  a  tyger  eying  with  deadly  glare  the  intended  but 
unapprehensive  victim,  or  a  serpent  in  the  very  act  of  contract- 
ing itself  to  dart  on  an  unwarned  human  object ;    and  suppose 
too,  that  this  spectator  had  an  advantage  of  position  which  ex- 
empted him  from  danger,  and  also  that  he  had  in  his  hands  the 
most  eflicicnt  means  for  striking  the  monster  with  death  or  sud- 
den fright ;  or  that  at  the  very  least  lie  could  alarm  the  person 
in  peril.    Now  what  sort  of  philanthropist  shall  we  represent  if 
we  next  suppose,  that  while  looking  at  this  creature  of  living 
flesh  and   blood,  who  is  perhaps  approaching  every    instant 
nearer  the  spot  where  death  is  lurking,  he  coolly  thinks  what 
a  fatal  predicament,  wonders  that  the  God  of  nature  should 


57 

suffer,  or  theologically  accounts  for  his  suffering,  heasts  of  prey 
and  serpents  in  a  world  made  for  man  ;  considers  that,  at  any 
rate,  as  God  does  suffer  them,  men  must  of  course  be  devoured 
by  them ;  and  so,  quitely  awaits  and  witnesses  the  catastrophe, 
highly  self-complacent,  perhaps,  in  the  sort  of  selfish  piety 
with  whicli  he  goes  away  blessing  the  Providence  wliich  had 
not  doomed  him  to  be  the  victim. 

"We  need  not  make  tlie  application.  We  will  only  suggest 
whether,  since  the  whole  accountableness  for  all  the  error  and 
wickedness  of  paganism  must  rest  somewhere,  the  alleviation 
obtained  before  the  Supreme  Judge  by  the  heathens  who  have 
been  denied  the  means  of  deliverance  from  so  wretched  a  con- 
dition, may  not  be  at  the  expense  of  those  who  shall  have 
refused  to  try  those  means  upon  them  ;  and  then  whether,  in 
the  solemn  time  of  adjudgment,  these  latter  will  dare  to  reflect 
off  this  accountableness  for  omission  on  the  Judge  himself,  in 
the  allegation  that  the  evil  was  of  his  own  permission,  when 
they  will  have  the  consciousness  that  he  gave  them  the  means 
of  at  least  attempting  its  destruction. 

This  religious  fatalism,  from  the  dominion  of  which  we  should 
be  glad  to  see  the  active  powers  of  all  good  men  rescued,  may 
somewhat  change  its  tone,  still,  liowever,  aiming  to  elude  the 
requisition  to  come  forth  in  the  activity  of  the  cause.  It  may 
affect  to  recover  from  the  kind  of  hopeless  dead  prostration  of 
feeling  at  the  awful  fact  of  God's  permission  of  so  dreadful  an 
evil,  into  adoration  of  his  power  as  almighty  to  destroy  it.  And 
how  loftily  God  shall  be  extolled,  and  how  emphatically  man 
shall  be  degraded,  when  it  is  hoped  that  some  absolution  from 
duty  may  be  suborned  from  the  contrast !  Feelings  of  indo- 
lence combined  with  ideas  of  the  sovereignty  of  God  will  form 
a  state  of  mind  prolific  of  such  reflections  as  these  :     Of  wIAt 

H 


58 

consequence  can  be  the  trivial  efTorts  of  such  insignificant 
creatures,  as  co-operating  or  not  with  the  energy  of  an  almigh- 
ty power  ?  What  signify,  in  a  great  process  of  nature,  some 
few  rain-drops  or  dew-drops  the  more  or  the  less  ?  What  are 
we,  to  be  talking,  in  strains  of  idle  pomp,  of  converting  the 
people  of  half  a  world  ?  How  reduced  to  contempt,  how  van- 
ishing from  perception  will  be  the  effects  of  all  our  petty  toils, 
when  mightier  powers  shall  come  into  action,  as  the  footsteps 
of  insects  and  birds  are  effaced  and  lost  under  the  trample  of 
elephants.  Were  it  not  even  temerity  to  affect  to  take  the 
course  where  the  chariot  of  Omnipotence  is  to  drive  ?  as  if  we 
would  intrude  to  share  achievements  pi'oper  to  a  God,  or  fancy 
that  something  magnificent  which  he  has  to  do.  Mill  not  be  done 
unless  we  are  there.  No,  let  our  text  be,  as  best  becomes  the 
humility  of  mortals  and  sinners,  "  Be  still  and  know  that  I  am 
God."  If  he  wills  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  nations,  he 
has  such  powers  and  means  for  accomplishing  his  purpose  as 
may  well  allow  a  sabbath  to  the  Iiands  of  all  his  servants,  while 
their  souls  may  adore  him  in  his  triumphs. — Very  true  ;  and 
so  in  the  literal  warfare  referred  to  in  our  text,  there  were 
means  of  overthrowing  the  heathen  invaders  without  the  inter- 
yention  of  the  people  of  Meroz,  or  any  other  people ;  for  tlie 
stars  in  their  courses  were  pre-appointed  to  fight  against  Sise- 
sa.  It  was  not  because  he  needed  them  for  combatants  that  the 
God  of  armies  had  required  tlieir  presence  in  the  battle. — Af- 
ter what  has  been  already  said  of  tlie  employment  of  feeble 
means  to  produce  a  triumpliantly  disproportionate  effect,  it  is 
supei-fluous  to  make  any  other  answer  than  an  admonitory  sug- 
gestion to  this  indolence,  or  indifference,  or  pride,  or  all  of 
them  together,  pleading  under  the  semblance  of  piety,  that  as 
it  has  been  hitherto  God's  usual  method  to  employ  human 
instrumentality  in  his  great  works  of  beneficence,  his  now  de- 


59 

dining  to  de  so  would  but  be  the  alarming  expression  of  his 
judgment  that  the  human  agents  now  are  not  worth  being  em- 
ployed on  earth,  nor  being  translated  to  heaven.  One  should 
think  that  dread  of  the  fatal  privilege  of  exemption  under  such 
a  judgment,  would  suppress  the  disposition  to  seek,  and  the 
willingness  to  accept,  an  exemption  on  any  ground  whatever. 

The  religious  fatalism,  in  a  still  further  modification,  will 
make  professions  of  anticipating  with  great  delight  the  certain 
accomplishment  of  the  glorious  revolution  in  question  when 
God's  selected  iime  shall  arrive.  Then,  too,  as  in  former  great 
changes,  there  will  be  noble  work,  and  enough  of  it,  for  such 
humble  instruments  as  men  to  perform  :  meanwhile,  beware  of 
premature  attempts,  and  wait  for  the  signs  that  the  time  is 
come.  Language  like  this  has  within  the  memory  of  many  of 
you  been  among  the  common-places  of  our  christian  communi- 
ties. If  there  be  still  some  cautious  christians  who  are  reluc- 
tant to  let  it  grow  obsolete,  we  might  ask  them  whether  they 
have  exactly  figured  in  their  minds  in  what  manner  the  ex- 
pected grand  process  is  to  begin,  or  what  appearances  tliey 
could  accept  as  signs  that  the  period  is  come  when  their  efforts 
would  not  be  like  a  vain  attempt  to  constrain  the  fulfilment  of  a 
divine  purpose  before  its  appointed  time.  Are  there  to  be  ex- 
traordinary meteors,  significantly  passing  eastward  as  they 
vanish  ?  Are  they  to  hear  that  the  temples  of  Seeva  are  sunk 
suddenly  in  ruins  at  the  stroke  of  thunder  ?  Or,  still  more  of 
prodigy,  are  all  the  chief  statesmen,  and  mercantile  men,  and 
military  men,  especially  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  the  east,  to 
become  with  one  accord  inspired  with  a  fervent  zeal  for  the 
christianizing  of  Asia,  perhaps  impelled  literally  to  a  spiritual 
crusade,  with  prelates  in  their  train,  against  Hindoo  idola- 
try? 


60 

Pcrlmps  they  will,  after  all,  disclaim  the  expectation  of  any 
extraordinary  signals  from  heaven,  when  it  occurs  to  them  that 
they  arc  in  danger  of  the  impiety  of  demanding  a  specific 
change  in  God's  mode  of  declaring  his  mind  to  men.  And 
probahly  they  will  profess  that  they  wait  for  no  other  tokens 
than  such  as  might  afford  a  rational  presumption  according  to 
the  rules  of  judgment  commonly  admitted  among  wise  men. 
Then  we  may  confidently  ask  why  they  should  not  accept,  as 
the  required  signs,  the  circumstances  that  have  attended,  thus 
far,  the  christian  cnterpi'isc  in  India.  Is  it  to  be  taken  as  a 
rebuke  from  Heaven,  on  a  rash  anticipation  of  Heaven's  de- 
signs, that  our  missionaries  have  been  kept  in  their  positions 
and  their  work  with  a  general  impunity  and  freedom,  not- 
withstanding that  during  many  years  of  the  time  there  pre- 
vailed against  them  a  systematic  unrelenting  hostility  of  spirit, 
in  authorities  which  in  all  human  appearance  might  have 
crushed  them  in  a  moment,  and  were  subject  to  no  visible 
cause  of  restraint  on  their  will, — a  preservation  somewhat  re- 
sembling that  of  Daniel  in  the  lions'  den  ?  Or,  that  the  com- 
paratively little  rancour,  and  the  very  considerable  favour, 
experienced  among  the  natives,  have  seemed  to  betray  some 
divine  coercion  put  upon  the  lions  and  the  furies  of  direct 
paganism  itself?  Or,  that  they  have  been  uniformly  preserv- 
ed in  the  excellence  of  the  christian  character  in  a  scene 
presenting  many  temptations  to  forfeit  the  distinction,  and 
while  bearing  the  moral  responsibility  of  an  undertaking  in 
which  that  forfeiture  would  have  been  fatal  ?  Or,  that  by  the 
multiplicity  and  extent  of  their  labours  and  attainments  they 
are  constantly  recalling  to  our  imagination  the  hundred-handed 
giant  of  fable  ?  Or,  that  between  the  produce  of  their  own 
exertions  and  the  encreasing  supplies  from  the  religious  public, 
pecuniary  means  have  never  failed  to  accrue  for  the  constantly 


61 

enlarging  prosecution  of  the  design, — even  a  very  great  disas- 
ter iiaving  operated  like  some  disruption  which  brings  a  gold 
mine  to  liglit  ?  Or,  that  while  the  sacred  scriptures  have  been 
spreading  with  astonishing  rapidity  among  the  nations  of  the 
East,  the  undertaking  which  has  given  them  this  range  of  mis- 
chief to  the  gods  has  produced  several  marked  good  effects  in 
our  religious  societies  at  home  ;  especially  in  the  point  of  help- 
ing to  break  up,  by  the  introduction  of  so  many  new  subjects 
connected  with  religion,  the  monotony  which  too  much  prevailed 
in  their  religious  services,  topics,  and  feelings  ? 

"What  is  the  interpretation  which  our  sooth-sayers  of  the 
colder  climate  of  the  church  put  upon  these  signs,  conjoined, 
as  we  are  delighted  to  view  them  conjoined,  with  the  enlarging 
missionary  exertions  and  successes  of  our  brethren  of  other 
religious  denominations  ?  They  may  consider  whether  they 
should  not  in  their  solicitous  and  alarmed  veneration  for  Hea- 
ven's appointment  of  times  and  seasons,  abet  the  gods  and  their 
priests  in  an  appeal  to  the  Lord  of  the  world  against  these 
missionary  intruders,  as  committing  impiety  against  Him  in 
having  "  come  to  torment  them  before  the  time." 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  a  number  of  the  persons  who  have 
thus  obeyed  what  they  believed  the  command  of  Supreme  Au- 
thority, to  die  in  the  service.  They  had  devoted  themselves  so 
to  die,  and  rejoiced  in  the  confidence  that  they  were  also  devot- 
ed by  a  superior  decree.  In  what  manner  may  we  believe 
that  their  departing  spirits  have  been  received  by  their  great 
Master  ?  Has  it  been  a  qualified  "  Well  done  good  and  faithful 
servants,"  that  they  have  heard  ? — as  if  he  should  say, — Feeble 
in  judgment,  rash  in  temperament,  but  honest  in  intention,  you 
are  pardoned  through  a  peculiar  extension  of  mercy,  and  are 
admitted  now  to  a  state  of  illumination  in  which  you  may  culti- 
vate the  humility  that  was  m  defective  on  earth,  and  see  in  the 


e2 

future  progress  of  your  Lord's  administration,  how  long  his 
servants  ought  to  have  repressed  the  presumptuous  impetuosity 
of  their  zeal. 

No,  this  could  not  be  their  reception  in  a  world  where 
they  were  so  soon  to  be  joined  by  the  first-fruits  of  that 
very  zeal,  those  converts  from  idolatry  who,  subsequently  to 
some  of  their  teachers,  have  died  in  the  faith  of  Christ,  and 
carried  evidence  to  heaven  more  striking  than  even  angels 
could  in  any  other  form  have  borne  thither,  that  the  power  of 
God  has  not  been  withheld  from  accompanying  his  cause,  to  a 
region  whither  some  of  his  professed  servants  would  not  have 
contributed  to  send  it.  And  if  we  may  imagine  the  nature  of 
the  emotion  which  their  accession  to  the  great  assembly  has 
excited  there,  we  cannot  believe  it  to  have  been  that  sentiment 
of  melancholy  felicitation  which  should  receive  them  as  an 
almost  solitary  exception  to  a  still  unaltered  gloomy  appoint- 
ment, an  exception  made  as  if  merely  in  order  to  evince,  by 
the  deliverance  of  these  few,  the  supremacy  of  God  over  all 
his  general  appointments,  in  the  same  manner  as  two  individ- 
uals have  been  exempted  from  the  general  law  of  mortality. 
Rather  it  was  that  sentiment  which  would  hail  them  as  signs 
that  a  decreed  change  of  dispensation,  a  new  aspect  of  the 
divine  sovereignty,  is  beginning  to  shine  on  a  dark  hemisphere 
of  the  world,  that  death  is  becoming  incomparably  more  trib- 
utary to  heaven,  and  that  the  ancient  barrier  between  the 
realms  of  Asia  and  the  kingdom  of  eternal  glory  is  beginning 
to  break  down. 

Represent  to  yourselves  also  the  emotions  of  these  proclaim- 
ers  and  these  converts  of  the  truth,  in  their  mutual  recognition, 
when  thus  re-united,  and  in  communion  with  the  preceding 
believers,  apostles,  and  confessors.  If  but  a  comparatively  faint 
apprehension  of  the  emphasis  of  those  congratulations  could  be 


63 

brought,  by  some  momentary  illapse,  upon  the  souls  of  the  most 
neutral  or  even  the  most  hostile  spectators  of  the  attempt  which 
has  had  such  a  consequence,  it  would  instantly  turn  to  grief  at 
the  thought  that  those  heavenly  felicities  had  owed  none  oi 
their  rapture  to  them. 

And  let  us  remind  those  professed  Christians,  whose  coldness 
toward  a  great  project  of  evangelization  would  put  itself  under 
the  form  of  reverently  awaiting  the  disclosure  of  the  Divine 
purposes,  that  by  their  profession  they  aspire  to  join  ere  long 
that  company  to  which  departed  missionaries  and  their  converts 
have  been  added.  It  may  be  the  destination  of  some  of  them 
to  leave  this  world  at  nearly  the  time  appointed  for  the  transla- 
tion by  death  of  other  of  these  indefatigable  labourers,  and  of 
more  of  their  proselytes.  Now  will  no  feeling  partaking  of 
apprehension,  arise  at  such  an  idea  ?  No  mortifying  anticipa- 
tion arise  at  the  thought  of  entering  the  other  world  in  compa- 
ny with  an  angelic  being,  the  different  rank  of  his  nature 
precluding  all  comparison,  or  precluding  reproach  for  the  dif- 
ference, if  comparison  were  made.  But  methinks  there  is 
something  to  cause  great  displacency,  and  even  a  degree  of 
intimidation,  in  the  thought  of  approaching  the  most  illustrious 
society  in  the  universe  in  the  company  of  spirits  of  our  own 
nature  and  our  own  times,  trained  under  nearly  similar  privi- 
leges and  instructions,  or  possibly  the  very  same,  but  who 
through  superior  zeal  shall  have  left  us  in  an  immense  despari- 
ty.  Think  whether  no  pain  would  attend,  even  on  the  passage 
to  heaven,  the  sense  of  the  contrast  between  persons  who,  in 
going  thither,  shall  be  finishing  a  course  of  ardent  devotedness 
to  their  Divine  Lord,  in  exertions  to  extend  his  kingdom  in 
destruction  of  the  cruel  reign  of  superstition,  with  a  degree  of 
success  attested  by  immortal  spirits  of  redeemed  heathens  that 
shall  have  preceded  them  to  the  sky,  and  that  are  to  follow — 


64 

and  persons  wlio,  so  like  them  as  we  have  supposed  in  the 
introduction  of  life,  and  having  made  also  the  same  profession 
of  devotedness  to  Christ,  shall  yet  he  conscious  of  having 
scarcely  made  an  effort  in  aid  of  that  service,  of  having 
scarcely  perhaps  given  it  their  cordial  good  wishes,  or  of  hav- 
ing hardly  heen  sorry  that  the  comparatively  small  numher,  as 
yet,  of  conversions  from  heathenism,  should  seem  to  afford 
some  advantage  to  t!ie  recusant  or  caviller.  Would  not  the 
consideration  of  such  a  contrast  exciting  such  feelings,  at  such 
a  time,  suggest  to  christians  whose  faculties  seem  more  readily 
applieahle  to  the  exercise  of  finding  objections  to  animated 
schemes  of  christian  experiment,  than  to  that  of  devising  means 
for  their  success,  a  new  topic  for  solicitude  and  perhaps  for 
prayer,  namely,  that  they  may  be  permitted  to  enter  the  supe- 
rior state  in  a  way  that  shall  not  immediately  bring  them  in 
communication  or  comparison  with  their  brethren  ascending 
from  the  war  against  idolatry.  It  would  appear  impossible  to 
avoid  at  least  feeling  such  a  wish,  unless  a  man  has  the  testi- 
mony of  his  conscience  that,  though  projects  which  seem  to  him 
to  partake  somewhat  of  enthusiasm  are  not  exactly  adapted  to 
seize  his  mind,  he  is  diligently  intent  on  promoting  the  cause 
of  God  in  plainer,  and  let  him  call  them  if  he  will,  soberer 
methods.  But  experience  does  not  authorize  us  to  expect  much 
zeal  or  exertion  in  any  generous  department  from  those  who 
recoil  from  missionary  projects  as  premature  and  enthusiastic. 
For  ourselves,  my  brethren,  wlien  we  think  of  those  devoted 
agents  of  the  best  cause,  shall  we  not  earnestly  wish  and  pray 
that  where  their  souls  shall  be,  there  ours  may  be  also  ? 

To  revert,  but  for  one  moment  more,  to  the  repressive  influ- 
ence of  the  cojisideration  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  divine 
appointments  on  some  good  men's  principles  of  action  and  hope, 
we  may  observe?  that  the  most  assured  belief  in  the  divine 


65 

decrees,  as  comprehending  all  things,  has  not  necessarily  the 
effect  of  paralyzing  the  active  powers.  There  is  no  deny- 
ing that  such  is  its  tendency  in  cold,  inanimate,  indolent  spirits, 
that  are  really  indifferent  to  the  objects  placed  in  view.  And 
so  for  any  one  of  the  whole  list  of  religious  truths,  there  is  some 
particular  state  of  mind  which  is  apt  to  take  from  it  an  injuri- 
ous effect.  But  let  there  be  an  earnest  interest  about  the 
objects  in  question,  and  then  the  zeal  and  activity  will  be  pro- 
moted ratlier  than  repressed  by  the  faith  in  all-comprehending 
and  absolute  decrees.  Accordingly  it  has  been,  we  think,  for 
the  greater  proportion,  by  decided  predestinarians,  that  the 
most  ardent  and  efficient  exertions  of  religious  iimovation  have 
been  made  upon  the  inveterate  evils  of  t!ie  world.  Not  only 
were  they  not  checked  and  chilled  by  this  article  of  their  faith. 
Not  only  were  they  not  withheld  from  driving  impetuously 
against  the  hated  thing  before  them  by  any  surmise  whether  it 
might  not,  for  the  present,  be  guarded  invisibly  by  the  shield  of 
a  decree.  Not  only  did  they  dart  their  weapons,  when  the 
enemy  appeared  to  be  within  their  reach,  without  being  stop- 
ped by  any  suspicion  of  an  optical  deception  in  this  seeming 
nearness,  this  possibility  of  striking  it.  This  is  only  supposing 
them  not  to  be  the  less  energetic  in  consequence  of  their  predesti- 
narian  faith ;  it  is  what  they  might  be,  supposing  them  the 'Wliile 
to  forget  it.  But  it  was  not  as  forgetting  their  principle,  and 
being,  for  the  time,  as  under  the  influence  and  advantage  of  a 
contrary  one,  that  they  so  nobly  exerted  themselves.  No,  it 
was  under  the  full  recollection  of  it  that  they  acted  j  and  it 
imparted  to  them  a  great  augmentation  of  vigour.  It  was  in 
the  element  of  this  doctrine  of  decrees  that  they  felt  their  impe- 
tus the  mightier,  their  weapons  the  sharper,  their  aim  the 
surer. 


66 

And  while  their  opponents  in  helief  might  he  wondering  at 
the  phenomenon  of  such  a  glow  of  life,  and  play  of  strength,  in 
an  element  which  they  had  heen  constantly  pronouncing  the 
most  mephitic  in  the  whole  world  of  opinion  to  moral  energy, 
the  persons  on  whom  the  faith  had  this  influence  could  have 
shewn  how  explicable  and  how  far  from  absurd  was  such  a 
practical  effect,  in  the  case  of  men  in  the  prosecution  of  plans 
for  the  destruction  of  what  was  opposed  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
The  first  consideration  in  the  matter  was  the  trite  and  obvious 
one, — they  were  certain  from  the  view  of  facts  and  of  every 
thing  in  revelation,  that  the  Almighty  will  make  very  great 
use  of  human  agents  in  what  remains  of  the  course  of  his  dis- 
pensations on  earth.  Next,  whatever  concealment  may  rest 
on  the  precise  nature  of  his  more  special  determinations,  which 
constitute,  so  to  speak,  the  divided  portions  of  his  one  grand 
design,  there  can  be  no  question  whether  that  grand  design  be 
the  abolition  of  the  dreadful  tyranny  of  evil  over  the  human 
race.  Therefore  in  putting  themselves  directly  into  his  hand 
as  willing  instruments,  they  were  confident  they  had  much 
more  than  a  chance  of  being  made  use  of  in  this  process  of 
destruction.  Many  even  unwilling  instruments  will  be  so  em- 
ployed, but  then  on  a  stronger  principle  tlie  willing  ones.  This 
willingness  was  probably  inspired  on  purpose  to  adapt  them. — 
Thus  they  had  tlie  confidence  arising  from  the  certainty  that 
what  they  were  intending  generally  was  what  God  intends 
generally,  and  intends  to  employ  in  great  part  human  beings  to 
carry  into  effect. 

But  no  man  who  is  in  earnest  can  stop  in  generals.  Those 
devout  predestinarians,  those  genuine  adorers  of  the  God  of 
decrees,  assumed  a  large  right  of  ajjplying  specially  the  an- 
nouncements of  divine  j)ui'poscs  made  in  general  terms.  >Vhen 
they  found  in  the  sacred  book  expressions,  for  instance,  pro- 


67 

iiouncing  the  determination  of  the  Almiglity  Mind  for  the  des- 
truction of  superstition  generally  and  comprehensively,  they 
have  regarded  these  as  bearing  with  infinite  emphasis  on  those 
particular  forms  of  superstition  which  they  were  most  intent  on 
destroying.  Those  particular  forms  must  be  distinct  objects  of 
intention  in  the  comprehensive  act  of  the  supreme  will.  And 
in  being  so,  they  appeared  to  these  men,  who  were  so  earnest 
for  their  destruction,  as  if  they  were  under  the  special  sentence 
of  distinct  appropriate  decrees,  and  under  this  doom  exposed 
forth  to  invite  these  enemies  to  come  to  their  extermination. 
And  they  came,  in  the  full  confidence  that  they  should  be  made 
to  contribute  to  it, — that  it  was  decreed  that  they  should. 

But  further,  the  inspired  book  presented  to  their  view  some 
predictions  and  promises,  relative  to  the  progress  of  the  king- 
dom of  Christ,  of  so  marked  a  character,  as  to  bring  out  tlie 
divine  decrees  in  much  definiteness  of  form,  by  the  very  terms 
of  the  declaration.  In  these  comparatively  distinct  representa- 
tions of  the  movements  which  are  to  fulfil  on  earth  the  purposes 
of  heaven,  these  zealous  spiiits  have  beheld  the  very  image, 
perhaps  on  a  larger  scale,  of  wiiat  they  were  prosecuting  in 
heaven's  name.  Tiiey  were  quite  certain  that  those  appointed 
and  predicted  movements  must,  at  any  rate,  involve  such  oper- 
ations as  they  were  attempting ;  and  the  whole  success  must  be 
the  success  of  those  included  parts.  The  inference  was  very 
near  at  hand — These  very  plans  and  proceedings  of  ours  are 
decreed,  as  portions  of  the  sovereign  scheme ;  our  work  and 
we  are  a  part  of  eternal  destiny. 

We  are  not  here  called  upon  to  suggest  the  cautions  against 
the  possible  excesses  and  dangers  of  this  assumption  in  good 
men  of  coincidence  with  the  divine  purposes.  Our  object  was 
to  sliew,  that  the  consideration  of  sovereign  decrees,  which  cold 
unwilling  minds  are  apt  to  allege  for   their  inertness  in  good 


68 

designs,  as  if  it  were  the  necessary  influence,  may  on  tlie  contra- 
ry become  one  of  the  mightiest  forces  for  action.  It  is  this  that 
can  make,  but  under  a  far  nobler  modification,  the  man  that 
the  poets  have  delighted  to  feign,  who  would  maintain  his  pur- 
pose though  the  world  fell  in  ruins  around  him.  A  missionary 
against  the  paganism  of  the  Hindoos  may  feel  an  animation 
specially  appropriate  to  the  service,  in  this  assurance,  that  his 
intention  is  the  intention  of  God.  Those  people  very  commonly 
fortify  themselves  in  the  notion,  or  the  pretence,  that  they  are 
immediately  actuated  by  some  deity,  and  therefore  fulfilling, 
under  a  law  of  necessity,  his  determinations  :  the  missionary 
will  feel  peculiar  invigoration  in  advancing  to  the  assault  of  a 
superstition  with  such  a  principle  in  its  front,  in  the  force  of  a 
principle  somewhat  analogous  in  form,  but  of  heavenly  essence. 
"While  they  will  have  it,  that  he  may  as  well  spare  the  efforts 
on  them  which  it  were  his  more  proper  business  to  level  at  the 
gods,  if  he  could  reach  them,  the  energy  of  his  soul  will  reply, 
that  he  accepts  the  challenge  so  made  for  those  enthroned 
abominations,  for  that  he  verily  believes  that  he  and  his  con- 
fraternity are  an  Avatar  for  their  destruction. 

We  have  dwelt  greatly  too  long  on  this  topic  of  religious  fa- 
talism, a  term  we  have  employed  to  signify  a  false  application, 
in  reasoning  and  feeling,  of  the  doctrine  which  acknowledges 
God's  sovereign  and  unalterable  predestination  of  events.  Our 
excuse  must  be,  that  these  reasonings  and  feelings  are  pecu- 
liarly apt  to  suggest  themselves  in  contravention  to  such  claims 
as  those  we  are  at  present  wishing  to  exhibit.  And  besides 
their  own  direct  force,  they  lend  strength  to  other  repugnant 
feelings  of  a  less  speculative  nature,  sometimes  by  enabling 
them  to  assume  the  guise  of  submission  to  a  law  of  religion, 
and  always  by  affording  them  the  sanction  of  seeming  to  be  in 


69 

agreement,  at  least,  with  such  a  law. — We  may  briefly  notice 
two  or  three  of  the  more  secular  causes  of  the  refusal  of  the 
desired  assistance. 

If  we  just  name  Party-spirit,  it  is  not  in  order  to  indulge  in 
any  accusatory  complaints  that  our  particular  undertaking  has 
materially  suffered  by  it.  Doubtless  we  ma^  be  somewhat  the 
worse  for  it ;  but  we  have  as  little  the  inclination  as  the  means 
for  calculating  how  much.  And  even  were  a  calculation  made 
and  verified,  of  that  proportion  of  pecuniary  and  any  other 
modes  of  aid  which  a  perfect  christian  liberality  would  have 
awarded  to  our  project,  and  whicli  party-spirit  may  have  with- 
held from  it,  we  should  still  be  gratified  in  the  assurance  that 
the  greater  part  of  what  may  have  been  so  averted,  has  proba- 
bly been  devoted  to  other  excellent  designs  to  which  we  wish 
all  possible  success.  We  are  too  confident  of  the  prolonged  fa- 
vour of  Providence  on  our  work,  and  too  much  pleased  at  seeing 
that  Providence  favouring  the  exertions  of  the  same  tendency 
made  by  other  sects  of  the  great  christian  community,  to  regret 
not  having  obtained  any  one  particle  of  the  means  which  have 
availed  to  good  in  their  hands.  And  we  think  we  have  too 
systematically  avoided  giving  any  just  cause  of  jealous  reaction 
to  our  friends  of  the  other  denominations,  to  be  debarred  in 
modesty  from  denouncing,  with  emphatic  censure,  the  spirit 
which  cannot  see  the  merit  of  a  noble  object  when  there  is 
some  point  of  controversy  with  its  promoters,  and  which  would 
almost  rather  wish  it  might  be  lost,  than  aid  them  to  attain  it : 
a  spirit  which,  in  promoting  an  interest  professedly  as  wide  as 
the  world,  as  liberal  as  the  sun,  would  enviously  account  suc- 
cess, or  the  means  of  success,  conferred  on  a  different  class  of 
labourers  in  the  same  general  cause,  so  much  unjustly  sub- 
tracted from  our  own  connexion  and  project ;  and  would 
avenge  on  the  grand  catholic  object  the  petty  offences  of  party, 
or  affronts  to  individual  vanity. 


70 

If  the  christian  communities  most  liable  to  feelings  of  compe- 
tition, were  asked  in  what  character  they  conceive  themselves 
to  stand  the  most  prominently  forward  before  the  world,  as 
practically  verifying  the  exalted,  beneficent,  expansive  spirit 
of  their  religion,  it  is  not  improbable  they  would  say,  it  is  as 
conspirers  to  extend  heavenly  light  and  liberty  over  the  heath- 
en world.  But  if  so,  how  justly  we  may  urge  it  upon  them  to 
beware  of  degrading  this  the  most  magnificent  form  in  which 
their  profession  is  displayed,  by  associating  with  it  littlenesses 
whic)i  may  make  it  almost  ridiculous.  Surely,  in  thus  going 
forth  against  the  powers  of  darkness,  they  >\ould  not  be  found 
stickling  and  stipulating  that  the  grand  banner  of  the  cause 
should  be  surmounted  with  some  petty  label  of  a  particular  de- 
nomination. Such  mortals,  had  they  been  in  the  emigration 
from  Egypt,  would  have  been  incessantly  and  jealously  busy 
about  the  relative  proximities  of  the  tribes  to  the  cloudy  pillar. 
A  shrewd  irreligious  looker-on,  who  cares  for  none  of  our  sects, 
nor  for  this  our  common  object,  might  indulge  his  malicious 
gayety  in  saying,  All  this  bustling  activity  of  consultation,  and 
orator}',  and  subscription,  and  travelling,  is  to  go  to  the  account, 
as  you  will  have  it,  of  a  fervent  zeal  for  Christianity  :  what  a 
large  share  of  this  costly  trouble  I  should  nevertlieless  be  sure 
to  save  you,  if  I  could  just  apply  a  quenching  substance  to  so 
much  of  this  pious  heat  as  consists  of  sectarian  ambition  and 
rivalry. 

We  cannot  too  strongly  insist  again,  that  a  sense  of  dignity 
should  spurn  these  inglorious  competitions  from  the  sections  of 
the  advanced  camp  against  the  grand  enemy.  Here,  at  all  events, 
the  parties  should  acknowledge  the  Truce  of  God.  If  they 
have,  and  must  have,  jealousies  too  sacred  to  be  extinguished,  let 
their  indulgence  be  reserved  for  occasions  and  scenes  in  which 
they  are  not  assuming  the  lofty  attitude  of  a  war  against  the 


71 

gods.  But  the  great  matter,  after  all,  is  to  be  solemnly  intent 
on  the  object  itself,  on  the  good  to  be  done,  compared  with 
which,  the  denomination  of  the  instrument  will  appear  a  cir- 
cumstance vastly  trivial.  Let  all  the  promoters  of  these  good 
works  be  in  this  state  of  mind,  and  the  modes  in  which  the  evil 
spirit  in  question  might  display  itself  will  be  things  of  imagina- 
tion or  of  history.  For  then  we  shall  never  see  a  disposition  to 
discountenance  a  design  on  account  of  its  originating  witli  an 
alien  sect,  rather  than  to  favour  it  for  its  intrinsic  excellence ; 
nor  an  eager  insisting  on  points  of  precedence ;  nor  a  syste- 
matic practice  of  representing  the  operations  of  our  own  sect  at 
their  highest  amount  of  ability  and  effect,  and  tliose  of  another 
at  their  lowest:  nor  the  studied  silence  of  vexed  jealousy, 
which  is  thinking  all  the  while  of  what  it  cannot  endure  to 
name  ;  nor  that  laboured  exaggeration  of  our  own  magnitude 
and  achievements  which  most  plainly  tells  what  that  jealousy  is 
thinking  of;  nor  that  manner  of  hearing  of  marked  and  oppor- 
tune advantages  occurring  to  undertakings  of  another  sect 
which  betrays  that  a  story  of  disasters  would  have  been  more 
welcome ;  nor  under-hand  contrivances  for  assuming  the  en- 
vied merit  of  something  accomplished  and  never  boasted  of  by 
another  sect ;  nor  excitements  to  exertion  expressly  on  the 
ground  of  invidious  rivalry,  rather  than  christian  emulation ; 
nor  casual  defects  of  courtesy  interpreted  wilfidly  into  inten- 
tional hostility,  just  to  give  a  colour  of  justice  to  actual  hostility 
on  our  part,  for  which  we  were  prepared,  and  but  watching  for 
a  pretext ;  nor  management  and  misrepresentation  to  trepan  to 
our  party  auxiliary  means  which  might  have  been  intended  for 
theirs. 

While  we  would  earnestly  admonish  all  the  promoters  of  our 
object  to  display  an  example  in  every  point  the  reverse  of  such 
tempers  and  expedients,  we  will  assure  ourselves  of  the  favour- 


72 

able  dispositioDS  of  cliristians  in  general  towards  a  design  which 
lias  its  own  sphere  of  operations,  in  which  it  has  both  the  liap- 
piness  and  the  merit  of  interfering  with  no  other.  It  has  not, 
by  either  interference  or  ostentation,  given  any  provocation  to 
party  jealousy ;  and  we  may  add,  that  it  is  grown  to  a  strength 
and  an  establishment  beyond  the  power  of  that  unfriendly 
spirit,  were  it  excited,  greatly  to  injure. 

When  we  mention  the  Love  of  Money,  as  another  cliief  pre- 
vention of  the  required  assistance  to  our  cause,  we  may  seem 
to  be  naming  a  thing  not  more  specifically  adverse  to  this  than 
to  any  and  every  other  beneficent  design.  A  second  thought, 
however,  may  suggest  to  you  a  certain  peculiarity  of  circum- 
stance in  tiie  resistance  of  this  bad  passion  to  the  claims  of  a 
scheme  for  converting  heathens.  By  eminence  among  the  vi- 
ces which  may  prevail  where  the  true  God  is  not  unknown, 
this  of  covctousness  is  denominated  in  the  word  of  that  God, 
Idolatry.  Now  as  it  is  peculiarly  against  idolatry  that  the  de- 
sign in  question  is  aimed,  the  repugnance  shewn  to  it  by  covct- 
ousness may  be  considered  as  on  the  principle  of  an  identity  of 
nature  with  its  enemy.  One  idolater  seems  to  take  up  the  in- 
terest of  all  idolaters,  as  if  desirous  to  profit  by  the  warning, 
that  if  Satan  be  divided  against  himself  his  kingdom  cannot 
stand. 

Or  rather  it  is  instinctively  that  this  community  of  interest  is 
maintained,  and  witliout  being  fully  aware  ;  for  the  unhappy 
mortal,  while  reading  or  hearing  how  millions  of  people  adore 
shapes  of  clay  or  wood  or  stone  or  metal,  of  silver  or  gold,  shall 
express  his  wonder  how  rational  ci-eatures  can  be  so  besotted ; 
shall  raise  his  eyes  to  heaven  in  astonishment  that  the  Almigh- 
ty should  permit  such  alienation  of  understanditig,  such  domin- 
ion of  the  wicked  Spirit :  and  there  is  no  voice  to  speak  in 
alarm  to  his  conscience,  Thou  art  the  man  ! 


As  this  unhappy  man  may  very  possibly  be  a  frequenter  of 
our  religious  assemblies,  and  even  a  pretender  to  personal  re- 
ligion, he  is  solicited,  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Clirist,  to  bring 
forth  something  from  his  store  in  aid  of  the  good  cause.  He 
refuses  perhaps  ;  or,  much  more  probably,  just  saves  the  ap- 
pearance and  irksomcness  of  formally  doing  that,  by  contribut- 
ing what  is  immeasurably  belovir  all  fair  proportion  to  his 
means ;  what  is  in  such  disproportion  to  them  that  a  general 
standard  taken  from  it  would  reduce  the  contributions  of  very 
many  other  persons  to  a  fraction  of  the  smallest  denomination 
of  our  money,  and  would  very  shortly  break  up  the  mechanism 
of  human  operation  for  prosecuting  a  generous  design,  throwing 
it  directly  on  Piovidence  and  miracle,  with  a  benediction  per- 
haps uttered  by  this  man,  (for  he  will  be  as  liberal  of  cant  as 
])arsimonious  of  gold)  on  the  all-sufficiency  of  that  last  resource : 
Yes,  God  shall  have  the  glory  of  the  salvation  of  the  heathens, 
while  he  is  happy  to  have  secured  the  more  important  point— 
the  saving  of  his  money. 

How  mueh  it  were  to  be  wished,  that  the  fatuity  which  this 
vice  inflicts  on  the  faculty  wliich  should  judge  it,  (herein  bear- 
ing one  of  the  most  striking  characteristics  of  idolatry)  did  not 
disable  the  man  to  take  an  honest  account  of  the  manner  in 
which  it  has  its  strong  hold  on  his  mind.  If  when  his  eyes  and 
thoughts  are  fixed  upon  this  pelf,  regarded  as  brought  into  the 
question  of  going  to  promote  the  worship  of  God  in  Asia,  or 
staying  to  be  itself  worshipped,  he  could  clearly  feel  that  he 
detains  it  from  fervent  affection  to  it  as  an  absolute  good,  he 
would  be  smitten  witli  horror  to  find  his  soul  making  such  an 
object  its  supreme  good,  for  supreme  it  plainly  is  when  thus 
preferred  to  the  cause  of  God,  and  therefore  to  God  himself. 


74 

But  perhaps  he  thinks  his  motive  regards  the  prospects  of 
his  family.  Perhaps  he  has  a  favourite  or  an  only  son,  for 
\vhom  he  destines,  with  the  rest  of  his  treasure,  that  ^wrtion 
M'hich  God  is  demanding.  In  due  time  that  son  will  he  put  in 
possession  hy  his  father's  death,  and  will  he  so  much  the  richer 
for  that  portion.  Tliat  this  wealth  will  remain  long  in  his 
hands,  a  prosperous  and  undiininislied  })osscssion,  is  not  perjiaps 
very  prohable  when  we  recollect  what  has  been  seen  of  the 
heirs  of  misers.  But  let  us  suppose  that  it  will,  and  suppose 
too,  that  this  son  will  be  a  man  of  sensibility  and  deep  reflec- 
tion. Then,  his  property  will  often  remind  him  of  his  departed 
father.  And  witli  what  emotions  ?  This,  he  will  say  to  him- 
self, was  my  father's  god.  He  did,  indeed,  think  much  of  me, 
and  of  seeming  for  me  an  advantageous  condition  in  life  ;  and 
I  am  not  ungrateful  for  his  cares.  He  professed  also  not  to  be 
unconcerned  for  the  interests  of  his  own  soul,  and  the  cause  of 
the  Saviour  of  the  woild.  But  alas  !  it  presses  on  me  with 
irresistible  evidence,  that  the  love  of  money  had  a  power  in  his 
heart  predominant  over  all  other  interests.  It  cannot  be  effac- 
ed fram  my  memory  that  I  have  often  observed  the  strong 
marks  of  repugnance  and  impatience,  an  ingenuity  of  evasion, 
an  acuteness  to  discover  or  invent  objections  to  the  matter  pro- 
posed to  him,  however  high  its  claims,  if  those  claims  sought  to 
touch  his  money,  which  he  contemplated,  and  guarded,  and 
augmented,  with  a  devotedness  of  soul  quite  religious.  But 
whither  can  a  soul  be  gone  that  had  such  a  religion  ?  Would 
he  that  acquired,  and  guarded  even  against  the  demands  of 
God,  these  possessions  for  me,  and  who  is  thinking  of  them  now 
as  certainly  as  I  am  thinking  of  them,  oh  would  he,  if  he  could 
speak  to  me  while  I  am  pleasing  myself  that  they  arc  mine,  tell 
me  that  they  arc  the  price  of  my  father's  soul  ? 


79 

If  the  rich  man  in  the  parable,  (that  parable  being  regarded 
for  a  moment  as  literal  fact)  might  have  been  permitted  to  send 
a  message  to  his  relatives  on  earth,  what  miglit  we  imagine  as 
the  first  thing  which  the  anguish  of  his  spirit  would  have  utter- 
ed in  such  a  message  ?  Would  it  not  have  been  an  emphatic 
expression  of  the  suffering  which  the  wealth  he  had  adored  in- 
flicted on  him  now,  as  if  it  ministered  incessant  fuel  to  those 
fires  ?  Would  he  not  have  breathed  out  an  earnest  entreaty 
that  it  might  not  remain  in  that  entireness  in  which  it  had  been 
his  idol  J  as  if  an  alleviation  might  in  some  way  arise  from  its 
being  in  any  other  state  and  use  than  that  in  which  he  had 
sacrificed  his  soul  to  it  ?  Send  away  some  of  that  accumula- 
tion ;  give  some  of  it  to  the  cause  of  God,  if  he  will  accept  what 
has  been  made  an  abomination  by  being  put  in  his  stead. — 
Send  some  of  it  away,  if  it  be  but  in  pity  to  him  of  whom  you 
surely  cannot  help  sometimes  thinking  while  you  are  enjoying 
it.  Can  you,  in  your  pleasures  and  pride,  escape  the  bitter 
thought,  that  for  every  gratification  which  that  wealth  adminis- 
ters to  you,  it  intlicts  an  unutterable  pang  on  him  by  whose 
death  it  has  become  yours,  and  by  whose  perdition  it  is  so 
much  ? 

How  different  the  reflections  of  those  inheritors,  who  feel  in 
what  they  do  not  possess  a  delightful  recognition  of  the  charac- 
ter of  their  departed  relatives  ;  who  feel  that  they  possess  so 
much  the  less  than  they  might  have  done,  because  those  rela- 
tives have  alienated  to  them  nothing  of  what  was  sacred  to 
God,  and  to  charity ;  and  who  can  comprehend  and  approve 
the  principle  of  that  calculation  of  their  pious  predecessors, 
which  accounted  it  even  one  of  the  best  provisions  for  their 
heirs  to  dedicate  a  portion  of  their  property  to  God.  How  dif- 
ferent therefore  the  feelings  of  a  descendant  of  such  a  person 


for  to  abet  and  sanction  a  proceeding  is  to  incur  the  accounta- 
bleness  as  completely  as  if  the  manifestation  of  an  opposite 
opinion  would  prevent  that  proceeding ;  and  it  were  an  idle 
evasion  to  plead  that  the  course  of  measures  in  question  would 
have  been  pursued,  all  the  same,  though  disapprobation  instead 
of  coincidence  had  been  avowed  by  these  individuals.  With 
this  obligation  resting  on  memory  and  on  conscience,  they  could 
not,  one  should  tliink,  without  alarm  for  their  christian  princi- 
ples, give  tlieir  sanction  to  wliat  must  inevitably  create  speedy 
and  large  demands  on  their  property,  unless  they  had  very  sol- 
id ground  for  assurance  of  being  left  still  competent  to  meet 
the  claims  peculiarly  authoritative  on  them  as  christians.  They 
had  to  consider  then  what,  in  sober  calculation,  it  was  probable 
or  possible  there  should  at  lengtli  be  spared  to  them  by  the  vo- 
racity of  sucIj  an  enormous  giili)h  as  they  saw  swallowing  up, 
year  after  year,  the  means  of  the  commu)iity.  We  will  pre- 
sume that  they  dUU  as  a  matter  of  conscience,  solemnly  consid- 
er this  question,  and  tliat  through  the  pi-ogressive  stages  of 
experience  they  were  still  satisfied,  as  remaining  constant  in 
the  assurance  that  their  approval  of  the  policy  which  caused 
such  a  tremendous  consumption,  did  not  involve  their  consent 
to  an  alienation  from  tlic  cause  of  Christ  of  any  thing  honestly 
belonging  to  it.  But  then  we  must  tell  them,  that  they  will 
now  come  with  a  very  bad  grace  to  say  that  they  have  been 
deceived,  and  that  the  cause  of  Christ  must  pay  the  forfeit  of 
their  miscalculation.  Surely  against  the  claims  of  a  service  to 
which  their  best  strength  was  put  under  the  prior  and  para- 
mount obligation  acknowledged  by  their  profession,  they  will 
hesitate  to  plead  that  they  have  been  lamed  in  their  willing 
adherence  to  another,  of  such  widely  different  character. 

To  those  who  are  not  liable  to  this  sort  of  nrgumentum  ad 
hominem,  \Yhile  deploring  the  disability  inflicted  by  the  conse- 


79 

quences  of  uatioual  conduct,  it  may  be  suggested  as  at  once  a 
consolation  and  incitement,  that  by  far  the  most    unequivocal 
omen  of  an  amendment  of  the  national  condition,  even  in  a  tem- 
poral i-cspect,  is  the  very  circumstance  of  tliis  recently  arisen 
zeal  and  activity  for  extending  the  prevalence  of  the  true  re- 
ligion in  the  world.      From  what  has  been  seen  thus  far  wc 
may  affirm,  that  the  Almighty  has  clearly  indicated  this  as  the 
part  of  the  world  from  winch  he  is  determined  to  draw  the 
chief  human  means  of  accomplishing  his  most  glorious  designs 
relatively  to  it  all  ,•  that  here  he  has  his  mines,  and  his  assemb- 
ling camp,  that  here  is  the  part  where  lie  the  sinews  of  the 
holy  war.  But  if  so,  and  if  that  war  is  to  be  on  so  great  a  scale 
as  appears  to  be  prefigured  in  the  visions  of  his  prophets,  may 
we  not  venture  to  say  that  he  will,  that  he  must,  protect  the 
stores  applicable  to  his  approaching  campaigns,  from  the  re- 
newal of  such  dreadful  depredations  as  we  have  witnessed,  and 
from  the  unmitigated  continuance  of  such  as  are  suffered  now  ? 
We  may  assure  ourselves  that  he  will  in  due  time  warn  off  the 
sacrilegious  hands  that  would  seek  to  plunder  a  property  ap- 
pointed to  so  sacred  a  service.      And  what  a  glorious  change 
of  the  national  condition,  when   God  shall,  as  it  were,  place  his 
angel  between  what  shall  remain  after  all  the  ravage  of  am- 
bition and  war  and  corruption,  and  the  re-ai)proach  of  these 
spoilers.      And  how  gratifying  to  behold  too,  in  the  contrasted 
operations,  the  difference  of  the  power  of  producing  an  effect, 
in  that,  whereas  an  astonishing  and  unparalelled  exjienditure  in 
the  vulgar  kind  of  war  has  resulted  in — leaving  men,  relatively 
to  the  objects  of  that  war,  nearly  wliere  they  were,  the  grand 
spiritual    power,  which  we  behold  entering  into  action,  will 
require  an  incalculably  less  portion  of  material  means  for  its 
consumption  in  an  operation  by  which  it  is  to  transform  the 
moral  world. 


You  will  not,  my  brethren,  feel  it  a  damp  upon  the  pleasure 
of  anticipating  this  rescue  fi-om  the  spoilers,  that  the  temporal 
means  so  redeemed  will  still  not  be  held  in  entire  and  absolute 
property  by  their  possessors,  but  will  still  be  in  part  under  a 
foreign  and  authoritative  claim.  For,  besides  that  it  is  pleasing 
to  devout  minds  to  hold  and  regard  all  things  as  belonging  to 
God,  and  as  to  subserve  whatever  purpose  he  pleases,  they 
may  be  very  confident  that  he  will  make  it  to  be  the  better  for 
the  community  itself,  in  a  temporal  respect,  whenever  there 
shall  prevail  in  it  a  disposition  to  apply  its  resources  to  promote 
his  cause.  Indeed  this  very  spirit  will  involve  a  principle  of 
countei-action  to  all  such  things  as  we  have  seen  most  misera- 
bly destroying  the  temporal  welfare  of  the  nation. 

For  the  present,  while  many  friends  of  religion  are  labouring 
under  the  grievous  pressure,  we  may  suggest  it  to  them  as  a 
consideration  not  nnfit  to  accompany  that  prudence  w  ith  which 
their  conduct  is  to  be  left  in  charge,  that  the  offerings  to  God 
from  what  calamity  has  left  have  a  peculiar  value  in  his  es- 
teem, and  in  the  feelings  of  the  sufferer  may  contribute  to 
exalt  adversity  into  piety.  Should  we  go  back  in  thought  to 
that  period  of  the  world  when  sacrifices,  literally,  were  ap- 
pointed for  the  expression  of  homage  to  Heaven,  we  might 
imagine  the  case  of  a  devout  man  whose  corn-fields,  or  planta- 
tions, or  flocks,  had  for  the  greater  part  perished  by  some 
destructive  visitation,  as  by  tempests,  or  fire,  or  locusts,  or 
disease.  Let  us  suppose  him,  nevei'thelcss,  in  looking  pensive- 
ly over  the  scene,  to  consider  whether  yet  some  small  portion 
of  the  remainder  miglit  not  be  spared  for  God,  as  a  token  of 
humble  resignation  to  him  that  gave  and  had  taken  away. 
Would  not  that  pi'obably  be  the  most  accej)tahlc  sacrifice  that 
luid  ever  burnt  on  his  altar,  and  offered  with  the  most  affecting 
emotions  of  religion  ?    Nor  would  it  seem  to  him  to  lessen  what 


8J 

was  already  so  little,  but  rather  to  augment  it  in  value  by 
bringing  a  divine  benediction  upon  it.  Or  suppose  a  pious 
man,  of  that  ancient  time,  to  have  been  east,  by  shipwreck, 
alone  on  a  desert  coast.  If  his  religion,  predominant  in  all 
scenes  and  over  all  feelings,  inspired  the  wish  to  make  a  burnt- 
offering  to  his  God,  his  only  means  might  liave  been  a  little 
j)rovision  saved  from  the  wreck,  and  fragments  of  his  ship  for 
fuel.  But  in  the  solemnity  of  bearing  toward  heaven  the  ex- 
pression of  a  sublime  devotion,  this  would  surpass  all  other 
sacrificial  flames  he  had  ever  kindled  or  beheld.  It  might  ap- 
pear to  his  faitii,  amidst  the  gloom  of  the  solitary  shore,  as  a 
symbol  of  that  presence  which  was  in  the  fire  that  Moses  saw 
in  the  desert. 

Having  thus  recounted  a  few  of  the  things  which  are  most 
apt  to  prevent  the  assistance  called  for  by  an  undertaking  like 
that  now  presented  before  you,  and  having  endeavoured  to  di- 
minish their  force,  we  will  draw  to  a  conclusion  by  suggesting 
a  few  additional  incitements  to  <*  come  to  the  help  of  the  Lord." 

And,  surely,  sucii  an  expression  itself  is  exceedingly  capti- 
vating ;  both  as  illustrative  of  the  marvellous  condescention  of 
the  Almighty,  and  as  pointing  to  the  great  fact  in  his  govern- 
ment on  earth,  that  he  chooses  to  make  men  the  instruments  of 
his  beneficent  designs  ;  a  fact  which  bears  a  no  less  gracious 
aspect  as  pi'esented  in  other  expressions  in  the  bible,  as  where 
active  good  men  are  honoured  with  the  description  of  "  workers 
together  with  God." 

The  energy  of  his  mere  will  might  strike,  in  instantaneous 
destruction,  on  the  idols,  and  the  temples,  and  the  whole  mons- 
trous fabric  of  mythology  as  a  system  of  actual  belief.  And  if 
we  were  regarding  tlieir  extermination  in  no  other  respect 
than  that  of  its  speed,  wc  might  be  tempted  to  desire  so  illustrious 


a  catastrophe.  If  such  a  thing  might  be,  a  servant  of  Glod 
would  be  willing  to  forego  tlie  honour  of  his  share  in  the  demo- 
lition. But  when  he  finds  it  so  evident  that,  in  the  divine 
plans,  it  is  not  the  sole  object  to  attain  the  one  last  effect,  but 
that  they  are  condescendingly  formed  in  such  a  manner  that 
their  execution  shall  be  an  employment,  and  a  discipline,  and 
an  honour,  to  human  agents,  will  he  not  exult  to  tbink,  that 
even  his  unworthy  hand  may  bear  a  torch  or  fire-brand  to  con- 
tribute to  the  conflagration  of  the  system  that  seems  to  defy 
heaven  ?  He  will  deem  it  a  glorious  tiling  that  the  supreme 
Lord  should  have  chosen  that,  in  the  sight  of  higher,  stronger, 
happier  intelligences,  such  feeble  fallen  and  guilty  beings 
should  be  summoned  forth  to  accomplish,  in  his  strength,  (in 
whose  strength  alone  those  nobler  minds,  also  feel  themselves 
strong)  a  great  work  for  the  honour  of  his  kingdom.  It  will 
also  be  a  religious  triumph  as  against  the  principalities  and 
powers  of  evil,  that  it  sliould  please  the  Almigbty  to  accomplish 
his  victory  by  the  means  of  creatures  who,  in  thus  serving 
their  God,  would  be  avenging  their  race  ;  that  these  powers 
should  perceive  that  when  the  irresistable  might  was  at  last  to 
be  put  forth,  it  was  to  be  tlirough  the  medium  of  beings  of  that 
order  which  they  had  so  long  despised,  and  tyrannised  over, 
and  tormented. 

It  is  a  still  further  cause  of  delight,  that  this  putting  forth  of 
strength  under  the  external  form  of  weakness,  is  analagous  to 
the  one  greatest  manifestation  of  vindicating  and  redeeming 
energy. 

As  an  incitement  to  christians  to  give  this  direction  to  a  por- 
tion of  their  zeal,  they  may  be  reminded  that,  while  enjoined 
to  preserve  moderation  in  their  own  demands  ujMjn  this  earth, 
they  are  entitled  to  be  ambitious,  shall  we  not  say  arrogant,  on 
behalf  of  their  Lord.       In  their  view  the  worst    usurpation 


83 

beyond  all  comparison,  in  the  woi-ld,  must  be  thaft  which  any 
where  presumes  to  withhold  an  inhabited  tract  from  his  king- 
dom. On  whatever  it  is  that  does  so  presume,  let  them  expend 
the  animosity  which  might  otherwise  find  its  meaner  exercise 
against  the  boundaries  that  obstruct  their  own  projects  of  ac- 
quisition. And  in  this  nobler  direction  it  will  not  be  the  passion 
wliich  frets  itself  against  what  is  unalterable,  and  despairs ; 
for  they  can  descry  on  every  spot  of  thft  pagan  regions,  as  if 
shining  through  the  gross  darkness  that  covers  tlic  people  and 
the  place,  a  mystical  mark,  to  indicate  its  assignment  by  that 
covenant  which  has  given  to  the  Messiah  the  heathen  for  his 
inheritance,  and  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  for  his  posses- 
sion. That  is  the  decree  in  heaven,  which  the  faithful  may 
joyfully  behold  in  anticipation  as  descending  in  divine  force  on 
the  earth,  and  there  becoming  the  reality  of  a  kingdom. 

They  see  among  leading  mortals  an  ardent  competition  for 
dominion  over  spaces  and  sections  of  territory,  with  angry  con- 
troversy about  titles  and  usurpations,  and  an  incessant  resort  to 
the  expedient  which  wastes  the  contenders  and  the  subject  of 
contention.  Let  them  rise  in  sublime  disdain  from  the  view  of 
these  wretched  strifes,  among  a  multitude  of  potentates,  to  the 
contemplation  of  that  one  victorious  dominion  which  will  come, 
at  length,  upon  all  the  contending  tribes  and  powers  of  the 
world  like  the  deluge. 

In  the  mean  time,  if  they  observe  any  state  making  a  great 
progress  in  power  and  occupancy  on  the  face  of  the  world,  it 
will  well  become  their  character  to  show  a  most  animated  con- 
cern that  the  kingdom  which  has  their  peculiar  allegiance  may 
be  as  evidently  advancing,  and  that  to  this  progress  that  en-^ 
largraent  of  the  temporal  dominion  may  be  made  to  subserve. 
And  here  you  will  all  be  reminded  of  the  wonderfully  rapid 
extension  of  the  British  acquisitions  in  Asia,  where  we  cannot 


84 

help  taking  it  is  an  omen  in  favour  of  a  still  better  cause,  that 
a  lying  spirit  has  betrayed  so  many  pagan  and  Mahomcdan 
powers  to  provoke  by  hostility  their  own  destruction.  We  can, 
in  this  view  of  such  vast  conquests,  thank  the  contrivers  and 
the  heroes,  wliose  contempt  would  at  any  stage  of  the  career 
have  been  excited  at  the  notion  of  its  having  been  the  real  cause 
of  their  success  that  they  were  preparing  the  way  for  Christi- 
anity. 

Men  of  council  and  of  war  may  scorn  this  fanatical  mode  of 
estimating  splendid  conquests;  but  we  can  see  little  on  any 
other  ground  to  console  good  men  for  the  heavy  addition  made 
by  these  conquests,  so  splendid,  to  tbose  public  burdens  which 
leave  them  such  scanty  means  of  doing  good  of  their  own  choice 
and  in  their  own  manner.  You  have  been  contributing,  and 
will  further  and  long  have  to  contribute,  to  the  cost  of  this  ex- 
tension of  empire,  and  can  hardly  accept  national  fame  as  an 
equivalent :  for  how  small  a  ])ortion  of  tlie  cost  restored,  if  that 
"were  possible,  would  you  consent  to  lose  yoin*  share  of  such 
fame !  Whereas,  had  that  which  has  thus  been  taken  from 
you  been  applied  to  t!ic  purpose  of  illuminatiug  and  evangeli- 
zing the  people  on  whom  it  has  been  expended,  you  would  now 
be  consoled  to  reflect,  that  what  was  quite  lost  to  your  own  use 
was  promoting  tlic  oidy  interest  for  which  you  could  be  content 
to  suffer  in  your  own.  Well,  though  any  such  objects  were,  of 
course,  antipodes  to  every  thing  within  the  contemidation  of 
jwliticians,  here  is  a  design  which  seeks  to  redeem  to  this  very 
purpose  what  has  been  taken  and  expended  in  a  8[)irit  infinitely 
foreign  to  it ;  and  what,  unless  so  redeemed,  may  be  justly  ac- 
counted, for  the  greatest  jmition  of  it,  lost  in  the  most  absolute 
sense.  The  advocates  of  this  design  have  no  way  of  avoiding 
the  confession  that  it  seeks  to  imimse  a  little  more  cost  for  In- 
dia, on  persons  to  whom  that  country  has,  independently  of 


85 

their  will,  cost  too  much  already ;  but  it  is  an  addition  some- 
what of  the  nature  of  an  insurance  for  Christianity  on  all  that 
has  been  expended  before.  It  is  like  something  to  be  thrown 
into  the  water  to  cause  that  miraculously  to  float  whicii  were 
else  irrecoverably  sunk. 

The  object  is,  that  the  true  religion  may  advance  upon  the 
track  of  our  victorious  armies,  may  plant  stations  on  the  fields 
of  their  encampments  and  battles,  may  demolish,  in  the  moral 
sense,  as  maiiy  strong  holds  of  superstition  as  our  artillery  has 
reduced  fortresses,  may,  in  short,  carry  on  operations  corres- 
ponding to  the  wars  in  all  the  points  esteenied  tlie  most  glori- 
ous. And  what  a  delightful  thing,  that  thus  a  Power  never 
thought  of  by  either  of  the  parties  in  the  long  conflict,  should 
come  in  and  take  the  best  of  the  spoils,  and  assume,  in  a  better 
sense,  tlie  dominion  which  so  many  potentates  have  lost ;  shew- 
ing the  one  people  how  they  had,  in  truth,  been  beguiled 
tlirough  expenditure  and  exertion,  for  an  object  for  wliich  they 
would  have  scorned  to  make,  knowingly,  a  thousandth  ])art  of 
such  a  sacrifice,  and  the  other  that  their  independence  was 
lost  but  that  their  souls  might  be  saved.  But  how  is  a  design 
which  looks  to  such  consequences,  to  be  prosecuted  ?  It  is  evi- 
dent there  is  no  way  but  that  in  which  the  friends  of  religion 
may,  if  they  will,  decline  to  afford  their  aid. 

Among  the  many  reasons  why  we  tliink  they  should  not  so 
decline,  we  may  suggest  the  certainty  that  all  contributions  will 
be  applied  in  a  manner  to  produce  the  greatest  possible  effect. 
One  of  the  most  conspicuous  and  uncontested  of  the  merits  of 
the  undertaking  has  been  the  economy  of  expenditure  through- 
out tlie  whole  system.  Tlie  statements  of  what  has  resulted, 
in  a  substantial  form,  besides  an  immensity  of  such  exertions 
as  cannot  be  brought  into  formal  account,  give  evidence  tliat  all 
who  have  been  concerned  in  expending  have  had  a  conscien- 


86 

tious  regard  to  the  object.  As  to  the  inissionaris  themselves, 
it  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  stronger  pledge  for  the  careful 
application  of  tl)C  whole  resources  than  the  memorable  fact  of 
their  having,  for  so  many  years,  generously  devoted  the  whole 
produce  of  their  own  indefatigable  labours.  This  warfare 
therefore,  in  llindoostan,  is  in  no  danger  of  incurring  a  charge 
which  has  been  constantly  and  heavily  laid  on  the  conduct  of 
our  other  wars  there.  "We  may  be  assured  that  all  the  sup- 
plies afforded  to  this  service  will  really  go  into  the  apparatus  of 
hostility,  and  will  be  felt  in  the  enemy's  camp.  It  is  very  grat- 
ifying to  a  contributor  to  have  cause  to  be  thus  confident,  that 
the  small  sum  which  passes  from  the  hand  as  a  reality  in  the 
surrender,  will  have  a  reality  of  effect  in  the  remote  service  to 
winch  he  intends  it ;  that  it  may  at  that  distance  strike  as  a 
missile  from  a  christian  hand  against  some  consecrated  abomi- 
nation. 

While  we  pay  the  tribute  of  our  admiration  and  gratitude  to 
the  devotedness,  the  disinterestedness,  and  the  astonishing  per- 
formances, of  the  fraternity  at  Serampore,  we  cannot  help  be- 
ina:  reminded  that  the  chief  of  these  labourers  are  considerably 
advancing  in  life,  and  the  leader  of  the  whole  band  verging  fast 
in  point  of  years,  to  the  decline.  We  will  not  dwell  on  the  ir- 
reparable loss  which  the  cause  sustained  by  them  with  so  noble 
an  energy  is  one  day  to  suffer.  But  it  docs  seem  highly  desi- 
rable that  the  remaining  portion  of  tlic  lives  of  these  veterans 
should  be  turned  to  the  utmost  account.  For  one  thing,  a  few 
spirits  so  long  and  severely  disciplined,  who  have  mastered  so 
much  diliiculty  tliat  nothing  which  can  remain  appears  at  all 
formidable  to  them,  and  who  habitually,  and  now  as  it  were 
mechanically,  labour  at  the  extreme  pitch  of  their  labouring 
power, — and  that  power  indefinitely  encreased  by  ])ractice, — 
a  few   such  men,  and  those  also  acting  in  concert,  arc   to  be 


$7 

estimated  at  perhaps  teti-fuld  their  numerical  force,  even  consid- 
sidered  in  reference  simply  to  the  amount  of  work  they  can 
perform.  But  again,  so  long  as  those  men  arc  spared,  to  re- 
main in  conjuncticm  at  the  head  of  tijc  system,  they  will  pre- 
serve in  it  a  compactness,  a  judiciousness  of  distrihution,  a 
commcnsurateness  of  agents  to  their  rcspccti^  e  work  and  to 
one  another,  and  a  comprehensiveness  of  scheme  greatly  condu- 
cive hoth  to  rapidity  of  execution,  and  to  that  uniformity  of 
character  throughout  the  whole,  wliich  is  of  great  importance 
in  a  cause  that,  in  provoking  the  conflict  with  so  mighty  a 
league  of  iniquities,  has  need  to  he  in  harmony  w  itljin  itself. 
Add  to  this,  that  the  high  example  of  these  leaders  is  forming  a 
standard  for  their  younger  co-adjutors,  who  will  he  the  hettcr 
qualified  to  hecome  their  successors,  the  larger  the  scale  on 
which  they  behold  their  manner  of  operation. 

Now,  while  it  is  not  in  human  power  to  make  any  addition  to 
the  length  of  these  invaluable  lives,  it  is  possible  to  make,  if 
we  may  so  express  it,  an  addition  to  their  breadth.  That  is,  if 
is  possible  for  these  men's  minds  and  tiieir  system  to  be  brought 
into  action  on  a  larger  amount  of  materials,  and  therefore  over 
a  space  both  morally  and  locally  more  extended.  And  great 
emphasis  is  to  be  laid  on  the  consideration  that  more  copious 
aid  supplied  during  their  life  would  be,  not  simply  so  much 
more  of  means  put  in  action,  to  produce  an  addition  of  effect 
proportioned  to  the  value  of  those  means  considered  absolutely  ; 
but  means  put  in  action  according  to  a  ratio  of  force  peculiar 
to  a  transient  conjecture,  the  like  of  which  cannot  exist  again ; 
such  erdarged  aid  would  serve  the  cause  in  the  magnified  pro- 
portion of  these  men's  pre-eminence  of  adaptedness  to  serve  it 

Nor  is  it  any  disparagement,  by  anticipation,  to  the  zeal  and 
talent  which  the  supreme  Head  of  the  church  will  appt>int  in 
long  succession  to  this  work,  when  we  represent  the  special 


importance  of  aiding  the  cause  in  this  particular  stage,  on  the 
ground  that  a  combination  of  men  uniting  the  advantage  of  a 
patriarclial  priority  in  time,  with  individual  endowments  so  dis- 
tinguished, and  with  such  com])lete  conformity  of  agencies,  con- 
stituting, as  it  were,  a  great  intellectual  machine,  can  never  be 
equalled  in  the  power  of  making  the  most  efficient  application 
of  whatever  shall  be  devoted  to  the  service. 

The  right  policy,  in  tliis  case,  is  the  same  as  that  wliich 
would  impel  a  state,  engaged  in  some  ambitious  enterprise,  to 
push  its  military  operations  most  earnestly,  and  with  every 
practicable  reinforcement,  during  the  last  campaign  in  which 
those  operations  could  probably  have  the  advantage  of  being 
directed  by  an  unbroken  band  of  veterans  trained  in  conjunction 
to  victory  in  the  service. 

And  even  as  regarding  these  men  themselves,  willing,  like 
St.  Paul,  to  forego,  if  it  might  be  put  at  tlieir  option,  a  more 
speedy  emancipation  from  their  toils  to  heaven,  and  to  labour 
on  to  the  last  period  of  exhausted  nature, — it  seems  due  from 
our  sympathy  and  gratitude  to  wish,  that  if  death  sliould  not 
deny  them  the  time,  the  christian  public  should  not  refuse  them 
the  other  means,  for  advancing  the  introductory  process  of  the 
great  work  to  a  point  where  they  would  be  perfectly  willing  to 
bid  it  adieu.  That  supposed  limit  of  their  cliristian  ambition  is 
not  altogether  an  imaginary  one  ?  Elijah's  chariot,  sent  to  bear 
them  away,  would  not  inspire  in  them  such  joy,  in  quitting  the 
world,  as  to  know  that  the  most  important  parts  of  the  revela- 
tion of  God  had  been  brought  to  speak  in  every  considerable 
language  of  Asia. 

But  at  all  events,  they  will  depart  witli  the  delight  of  know- 
ing, that  their  distinguished  lot  on  earth  has  been  to  open  the 
way,  in  an  important  sense,  to  the  region  whither  they  arc 
going,  for  a  countless  multitude,  many  of  whom  they  will  be 


assured  are  to  follow  them ;  while  they  will  rejoice  to  have 
staid  long  enough  to  see  the  evinced  and  completed  efficacy  of 
their  appointment  as  evangelists  in  some  that  are  gone  before 
them.  They  will  know  that  by  the  cause  in  which  they  have 
lived,  and  laboured,  and  are  djing,  a  new  and  beneficent  mode 
of  the  divine  attention  has  been  determined  upon  a  formerly 
estranged  and  desolate  tract  of  the  world ;  inasmuch  as  wher- 
ever there  are  faithful  witnesses  to  the  truth,  and  repenting 
sinners,  and  pagans  making  sacrifices  of  the  idols  to  which  they 
had  offered  sacrifice,  and  commencing  in  the  name  of  Christ  a 
new  life,  amidst  prayers  and  praises  in  languages  which  never 
addressed  the  Almighty  before,  there  is,  if  we  may  humbly  so 
speak,  something  to  necessitate  toward  that  spot  a  far  more 
special  emanation  of  favour  and  providence  from  heaven,  than 
when  that  moral  waste  contained  nothing  related  to  God.  If 
there  were  but  one  particle  there  of  such  new  and  sacred  exis- 
tence, heaven  must  continue  in  communication  with  the  spot 
where  there  is  something  so  much  its  own,  till  it  became  ex- 
tinct, or  were  resumed  to  the  sky.  How  happy  then  if  there 
shall  be  there  an  augmentation,  every  day,  of  what  thus  bears 
a  special  relation  to  God,  to  become  as  it  were  a  continually 
mightier  attraction  of  the  divine  benignity  thitherward ;  till  at 
length  the  language  of  prophecy  shall  be  fulfilled,  "  Behold,  the 
tabernacle  of  God  is  with  men,  and  he  will  dwell  with  them, 
and  they  shall  be  his  people,  and  God  himself  shall  be  with 
them,  and  be  their  God." 

In  the  confidence  of  such  a  progress  of  the  gracious  dispen- 
sation of  which  we  have  beheld  the  commencement,  it  might 
he  permitted  to  indulge  for  a  moment  in  the  contemplation  of 
India  as  in  a  future  age,  in  which  distant  period  we  can  in  a 
measure  conceive  what  will  be  the  reflections  of  a  devout  ob- 
sserver,  regarding  the  scene  in  reference  to  the  past.     With 

M 


90 

the  picture  on  liis  imagination,  of  India  as  the  missionaries  will 
have  recorded  that  they  found  it,  he  may  look  over  the  ample 
region,  to  wonder  what  is  become  of  that  direful  element  which 
was  once  perceived  pervading  and  corrupting  the  whole  wide 
diffusion  of  mental  and  moral  existence,  bringing  out  to  view, 
as  it  were  in  a  darkness  visible  of  depravity,  the  souls  of  men 
conspicuously  through  their  less  sable  exterior.  The  dusky 
visages,  the  attire,  the  structure  of  habitations,  and  the  grand 
features  of  Nature,  will  be  seen  the  same  ;  but  a  horrid  some- 
thing, composed  of  lies,  and  crimes,  and  curses,  and  woes,  that 
did  rest  in  deadly  possession  over  all  the  land,  will  be  broken 
up  and  gone.  Where  has  a  place  been  found  for  what  occupied 
for  ages  after  ages  so  many  cities,  and  villages,  and  houses, 
and  minds  ?  What  tempest  has  driven  it  away  ?  What  pres- 
ence has  been  here  which  that  presence  could  not  abide  ?  Was 
it  that  Spirit  in  awe  of  which  eternal  night  vanished  at  the  ere-, 
ation  of  the  world  ? 

He  may  look  frnm  the  southern  shores  toward  the  sublime 
mountain-boundary  of  the  region  on  the  north,  and  reflect  what 
a  sence  it  was  to  confront  heaven,  in  all  this  breadth,  with 
deities,  and  doctrines,  and  devotions,  detestable  to  the  true 
God  ;  each  individual  of  unnumbered  millions  being  infatuated 
and  busied  by  notions  and  practices  not  one  of  which  could  have 
been  on  eai'th  but  by  the  fall  of  our  nature.  But  how  glorious 
for  that  reflecting  observer  to  feel  it  verified  in  him  tiiat  this  is 
but  a  vision  of  the  past,  and  that,  departing  like  a  dream  when 
one  awakes,  it  leaves  him  in  view  of  a  bright  and  blessed  real- 
ity. How  he  will  exult  in  the  palpable  evidence  that  tl»e  Son 
of  God  has  spread  his  dominion  from  those  shores  to  those 
mountains  ;  tliat  tlie  oracles  of  truth  have  taken  place  of  the 
most  silly,  and  loathsome,  and  monstrous  legends  witli  which 
the  father  of  lies  ever  made  contemptuous  sport  of  the  folly  of 


91 

his  dupes ;  and  that  the  new  religion  admitted  in  faith  has 
crowned  itself  and  its  believers  with  aU  its  appropriate  virtues. 
When  joining  with  them  in  exercises  of  worsliip  to  the  true 
God,  he  may  have  sliort  lapses  of  the  mind  into  a  view  of  the 
past,  presented  in  vivid  images  of  the  fantastic  fooleries,  and 
the  orgies,  that  once  celebrated  the  infatuation  which  reigned 
as  religion  in  the  people,  on  the  very  same  spot,  as  attested  by 
some  relic  of  the  ruins  of  a  temple ;  and  he  will  recover  from 
such  brief  alienation  of  tlmught  to  verify  the  fact,  that  he  actu- 
ally is  among  persons  revert^ntly  calling  on  God  in  the  name 
of  Christ.  That  disease  of  the  soul  will  be  gone  that  exhibits 
itself  in  alternate  lethargy  and  raving.  The  charities  of  hu- 
manity, restored  among  them,  will  shew  why  it  was  that  their 
ancestors  could  look  upon,  or  even  cause,  the  death  of  relatives 
and  friends  with  stockish  indifference.  And  finally,  he  will 
see  the  effect  of  that  which  missionaries  are  seeking  to  promote 
among  them,  in  the  manner  in  which  the  death  of  christianized 
Hindoos  will  differ  from  that  sullen  quiet,  that  stoicism  without 
philosophy,  with  which  the  pagan  Hindoo  submits  to  fate. 

And  if  we  might,  for  a  moment,  entertain  so  improbable  an 
idea,  as  that  this  observer  and  comparer  should  be  uninformed 
of  the  general  course  of  means  and  operation,  through  which 
the  Almighty  Spirit  had  accomplished  this  great  change,  we 
can  suppose  his  conjectures  on  the  subject  to  be  much  too  mag- 
nificent. How  came  thousands  of  temples  to  be  surrendered 
to  the  decay  of  time  or  the  violence  of  dilapidation,  an  infinity 
of  idols  to  be  demolished,  a  mythology  and  ritual,  involving  the 
whole  life  and  being  of  the  human  multitude,  to  be  exploded, 
the  power  of  Brahmins  and  priests  to  be  annihilated,  a  whole 
intellectual  and  moral  system  to  be  supplanted  by  its  opposite  ? 
Might  not  such  questions  put  his  mind  on  the  effort  to  imagine 
the  most  extraordinary  modes  of  divine  interposition?     Ho 


92 

might  fancy,  perhaps,  that  some  great  convulsion  of  nature 
had  contributed  to  the  overthrow  of  so  many  structures  forming 
the  glory  and  the  foi'tresscs  of  superstition ;  that  portentous 
phenomena,  bearing  a  menacing  aspect  upon  the  pagan  rites, 
had  been  displayed  in  the  heavens ;  that  contemporary  mira* 
des,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  had  attested  the  record  of 
the  ancient  ones ;  or  that  some  peculiarity  of  temjioral  good 
fortune,  frequently  attending  the  converts,  had  marked  them 
out  to  the  gross  apprehension  of  the  idolaters  as  favourites  of 
the  Power  that  governs  the  world.  And  might  he  surmise  in 
addition,  that  the  foreign  state  which  had  conquered  Hindoos- 
tan,  must  have  systematically  lent,  during  the  acquisition  and 
possession,  its  whole  influence  arising  from  conquest  and  do- 
minion, to  promote  Christianity  by  every  expedient  short  of 
force  ? 

No,  he  might  be  told,  you  see,  in  all  this  glorious  view,  noth- 
ing which  is  to  be  referred  to  any  such  causes.  The  woi'k 
began  in  some  of  the  humblest  movements  that  ever  pointed  to 
a  great  object,  movements  in  which  the  actors  perhaps  owed 
their  toleration  to  contempt.  A  train  of  ideas  was  excited  in 
the  miiids  of  some  individuals  respecting  the  prophecies  relative 
to  the  heathen  nations.  Their  conversations  about  these  with 
their  religious  friendvS,  led  to  meetings,  prayers,  little  arrange- 
ments of  co-operation,  and  slender  contributions  of  money.  A 
gradual  extension  of  these  measures  resulted  in  the  sending  of 
several  zealous  men,  by  means  of  conveyance  marked  with  the 
disfavour  of  the  high  authorities,  to  begin  the  experiment.  It 
was  commenced  under  appearances  very  far  from  resembling 
Constantine's  pretended  vision  of  a  cross  in  the  clouds,  inscrib- 
ed as  the  sign  of  victory  ;  or  from  recalling  to  mind  the  accounts 
of  pagan  priests  of  other  ages  having  been  afTiighted  by  the 
trembling  of  their  fanes,  accompanied  by  fearful  voices  from 


93 

their  recesses,  announcing  their  abandonment  of  the  solemn 
abode  by  the  deities.  Had  these  servants  of  Christ  taken  up 
their  design  on  any  condition  of  the  intervention  of  preternatu- 
ral omens  and  instrumentality,  the  only  dictate  of  their  expe- 
rience, through  every  stage,  would  have  been  to  lay  it  down. 
But,  wild  as  they  were  accounted,  both  the  promoters  in  Eng- 
land and  the  agents  in  the  East,  they  had  entertained  no  pre- 
sumptions which  could  lead  to  the  conclusion  of  its  not  being 
worth  while  to  persevere,  and  to  enjoin  on  their  successors  an 
interminable  perseverance,  in  the  trial  of  what  the  Almighty 
should  see  fit  to  accomplish  at  length  by  means  of  the  diffusion 
of  the  Bible,  and  a  never  tired  repetition  of  missionary  jour- 
neys, addresses,  and  conferences,  with  the  co-operating  effect  of 
schools,  and  writings  on  religion.  This  economy  of  plain  ex- 
pedients, (it  may  be  supposed  to  be  said  to  the  future  admirer 
of  the  transformation)  these  operations  so  little  related  to  poe- 
try or  prodigy,  or  to  the  wild  ardour  of  fanaticism,  went  on  in 
augmenting  vigour,  while  those  who  had  commenced  them  sunk, 
one  after  another,  in  the  dust.  On  their  tombs  their  successors 
devoted  themselves  to  prosecute  the  same  labours  of  the  holy 
war.  Converts  from  heathenism,  in  still  greater  numbers 
every  year,  were  brought  in  as  captives,  but  to  go  out  under 
the  oath  of  hostility  against  that  of  which  they  and  their  an- 
cestors had  been  the  slaves.  The  succeeding  generations  of 
the  christians  of  the  west,  were  liappy  to  continue  from  that 
quarter  their  alliance  and  aid  in  the  mightier  progress  of  a 
cause,  which  their  ancestors  had  begun  in  so  diminutive  a  form, 
committing  in  faith  and  hope  its  success  to  God.  The  influence 
of  that  Sovereign  Spirit  has  descended  in  a  progressive  in- 
crease of  eflicacy  far  more  tlian  proportioned  to  the  enlargment 
of  the  system  of  means  :  And  so  it  has  come  to  pass,  (it  might 
be  said  to  the  future  admirer)  that  you  can  exult  in  the  dis- 


94 

appearance  from  the  world  of  one  mighty  form  of  evil,  against 
which  the  christians  of  a  past  age  had  to  maintain  a  long  hos- 
tility. 

My  hrethren,  against  this  prodigious  form,  and  against  the 
whole  dreadful  power,  of  evil,  it  is  our  vocation  to  be  engaged 
in  the  war.  It  were  in  vain  to  wisli  to  escape  from  the  condi- 
tion of  our  place  in  the  universe  of  God.  Amidst  the  darkness 
tliJit  veils  from  us  tlie  state  of  that  vast  empire,  we  would  wil- 
lingly be  persuaded  that  this  our  world  may  be  the  only  region, 
(excepthig  that  of  penal  justice)  where  the  cause  of  evil  is  per- 
mitted to  maintain  a  contest.  Here  perhaps  may  be  almost  its 
last  encampment,  where  its  prolonged  power  of  hostility  may  be 
suffered  in  order  to  give  a  protracted  display  of  the  manner  of 
its  destruction.  Here  our  lot  is  cast,  on  a  ground  so  awfully 
pre-occupied  ;  a  calamitous  distinction !  but  yet  a  sublime  one, 
if  thus  we  may  render  to  the  Eternal  King  a  service  in  which 
better  tribes  of  his  creaturps  may  not  share  j  and  if  thus  we 
may  be  trained,  through  devotion  and  conformity  to  the  Celes- 
tial Chief  in  this  warfare,  to  the  final  attainment  of  what  he 
has  promised,  in  so  many  illustrious  forms,  to  him  that  over- 
cometh.  We  shall  soon  leave  the  region  where  so  much  is  in 
rebellion  against  our  God.  AVe  shall  go  where  all  that  pass 
from  our  world  must  present  themselves  as  from  battle,  or  be 
denied  to  mingle  in  the  eternal  joys  and  triumphs  of  the  con- 
querors. 


I 


k'^.i^SLa:- 


^^TE  DIJP" 


( 


'^W*' W^vT' 


mM^^ 


^:^i- 


